Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Rejoicing in Hope

Romans 12:12a

by Dave Wilkinson

October 17, 1999

We Californians never get a break. It is rumored that even God is sick of us. According to the Rev. Speaker Gerald Polley of Maine, thousands of dead Californians -- including Frank Sinatra -- have recently been banned from entering heaven. According to Polley, anyone who dies in California is turned away because our state is filled with so many demons. Apparently, dead Californians are currently being housed in a limbo location described as an eternal Ramada Inn.

You know, of course, why there are so many demons in California. The 1994 Northridge earthquake literally opened the gates of hell and released the powers of darkness. My source is this great journal, the "Weekly World News." Shortly after the quake, The News printed an actual photo of a monstrous creature emerging from a fissure in the freeway. According to the "News" the real magnitude of the temblor wasn’t 6.6, 6.7 or 6.8. It was 6.66. Take out the decimal and you’ve got the number of the antichrist. I appreciate God’s cooperation in illustrating this sermon so powerfully with the quake yesterday morning — and giving us the Santa Ana "devil winds" today.

Now fortunately there’s still hope — maybe even for California. It says right here (WWN 9.14.99) that there is a mystery light in the northern sky that is baffling our top scientists. There are only two possible explanations. It is either an alien space ship or it is Jesus coming back.

Is this the hope we have as Christians? Is this the foundation of our faith? No. We have something much more solid than checkout line tabloids. We have a book -- the Bible -- where God has revealed Himself to us an made great promises of His faithfulness.

In Romans 12, beginning with verse 9, Paul talks about love. He is not talking about what love is -- in some abstract way. He is talking about what love does -- what love looks like in everyday life.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says that love, "hopes all things." He says the same thing in Romans 12:12. It might be paraphrased: "since we love and are loved, let us rejoice in hope."

In some ways hope is standard equipment for humans beings. Everyone hopes for something. But the Christian hope that Paul writes about in this great letter is much more than that. It is called a "certain hope." It is a future that is not only possible but guaranteed. It is not "hoping to goodness " but hoping in God. That is why, in Romans 12:12, we are called to "rejoice in hope."

We are called to rejoice because we have a certain future. Our awareness of God’s love tells us that this is not all there is. Paul says that it we have the hope of a wide-open future. In Romans 5:1-2 he says that it is the hope of sharing the glory of God Himself. This hope come to us because we are "justified by faith and therefore we have peace with God."

This is something we know because of what God has done in history. He sent His own Son to die for us. The love that is evidenced by God’s action in Jesus gives us a rock-firm foundation for our expectation of a large future.

A woman named Jeanne Calment, at 120 years, was the oldest living human being whose birth date can be authenticated. When she was asked to describe her vision for the future she replied, "Very brief." Jeanne spoke in good humor. But for many, the vision is very brief even when they are relatively young. They have their horizons bounded by what is seen. Like Carl Sagan, for them "the cosmos is all that ever has been or ever will be." The horizons of the Christian are not cut off like this. They are wider even than the universe. Hope for a great future is the main thing that sets Christians apart from the people of our society who are merely secular in their world view.

Romans 12:12 literally reads, "In the hope rejoicing." We do not just have hope in a general sense — a Christianized form of optimism. It is the hope. It is hope that has a very specific content because of what God has shown us in Jesus. It is a conviction about the future because of what we have experienced in the past. In Titus 2:13 Paul calls it the "blessed hope" of the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" We hope in this way because we hold a guarantee from the One who has never lied.

There is a business located in Southern California — of course — called "Heaven's Union" that promises the service of delivering messages to deceased loved ones in heaven via terminally ill patients. A message of 50 words or less costs the sender $40, up to 100 words, $60. Delivery is guaranteed. The terminally ill messengers are paid $10 per message and are briefed just prior to their own deaths. For those who want extra assurance that their message will arrive, the owner has "priority service." For $125 your message will be carried by three couriers.

Business has been brisk despite the owner being vague about just how the messages are delivered. As yet, no receiver in the heavenly realm has sent back proof of delivery. But it might just be the next best thing to being there. Think of it: sending. to those who have gone beyond via those who are about to go, the words we wanted to say but which remained unspoken, misunderstandings we would like to clear up, expressions of love and longing we want to express.

But frankly, its worth a whole lot more to get a message back from heaven from one who has been there. That’s what we have in Jesus Christ. And here is His guarantee: "I am the bread of life -- I am the living water -- whoever hears My words and believes in Him who sent Me has eternal life; he has already passed from death to life" (John 6:35; 5:24).

Having this promise gives us a deep sense of security in God. As J. I. Packer writes in Knowing God: "What matters supremely is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it -- that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me. I know Him because He first knew me, and continues to know me. He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when His eye is off me, or His attention distracted from me, and no moment, therefore, when His care falters. There is unspeakable comfort in knowing that God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love and watching over me for my good. There is tremendous relief in knowing that His love is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me."

That is also our experience. And Paul reminded us back in Romans 5:5 that our hope does not disappoint -- because "the love of God Himself has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." That is why we cannot only have hope of eternity. We can rejoice in it. We must rejoice in it even when, as Paul immediately goes on to say in Romans 12, we are going through hard times.

A man named Dan Richardson expressed this in poetic form. When Richardson, an enthusiastic believer in Christ, lost his battle with cancer, the piece was distributed at his memorial service.

Cancer is limited...

It cannot cripple love,

It cannot corrode faith,

It cannot eat away peace,

It cannot destroy confidence,

It cannot kill a friendship,

It cannot shut out memories,

It cannot silence courage,

It cannot invade the soul,

It cannot reduce eternal life,

It cannot quench the spirit,

It cannot lessen the power of the resurrection."

Richardson knew that because Richardson knew Jesus — and he knew that Jesus was totally committed to him. That gave him a sense of the possible even on his death bed.

In the same way, hope in the future should make a tremendous difference in our worship. Ben Patterson writes in Deepening Your Conversation With God: "To praise God is to hope in the world to come and is therefore the most practical act in this world. Occasionally I hear something like this said after a great service of worship: "That was wonderful! Too bad we have to go back to the 'real world' now." The assumption seems to be that what happened in worship was a pleasant and therapeutic diversion, and that the real thing is out there in the rough and tumble of the world. It's the other way around! What was seen and felt in worship is the real thing. The secret is to remember what we saw and felt when we go back into the world of deception and lies."

It’s not easy to remember once we leave here because we are all infected to one degree or another with a culture that tells us that this world, this age, is what is real. Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek Church said in a sermon: "You almost have to be a minister to feel the frustration of giving messages about the afterlife to a congregation that has been deeply marred because they live in an existential culture. I stand up these days and say, ‘You will all die someday!’ and I get a yawn from people who say, ‘Probably not today. I'll die someday but not today. I'm only living for today.’

"Or I stand up in front of a congregation and say, "You will all give an account of your life someday before a holy God." And they say, ‘Yawn, yawn. Not only am I not planning on dying today, I'm not planning on giving an account of my life today. Eat, drink, and be merry. The day of reckoning is a long way off.'

"Or I stand in front of a group of people and say "You will spend more time in the afterlife than you will in this life, so you'd better prepare for your ever after today." "Yawn. Yawn. Yawn. 'The sky is falling.' Will somebody shut this guy up? I don't go to church to hear trivialities about something that may not happen for another twenty years. I just want to feel better today.’ And you're thinking, ‘He’s usually such a level-headed pastor. I wonder why he’s gone off' on this tangent.'

"Friends," Hybels writes, "it isn't a tangent. It seems like a tangent to a here-and-now culture, but throughout history people have always understood -- culture after culture after culture -- that the afterlife is where you will spend most of your time. So prepare today for the afterlife.

"When you look at the ministry of Jesus during His stay on earth, you discover that one of the central themes of his teaching was the need for all people to prepare today for the afterlife. His famous words, "What does it profit a person . . ." ' Think. What does it profit a person to gain the whole world in sixty or seventy years and lose his own soul for eternity? Think. God has set eternity in your heart. You know better. There is life beyond the grave. That life extends through eternity, which means that you will spend infinitely more time in the afterlife than you will in this life."

Back in the 1930's, a great Bible teacher and former pastor of the Moody Memorial Church in Chicago named Henry Ironside was riding on a train in Southern California when a gypsy got on and sat beside him. "How do you do, gentleman," she said. 'You like to have your fortune told? Cross my palm with a silver quarter, and I will give you your past, present, and future."

"Are you very sure you can do that?" Ironside asked. "You see, I am Scottish, and I wouldn't want to spend a quarter and not get my full value for it."

The gypsy was very earnest. "Yes, gentleman," she said. "I can give you your past, present, and future. I will tell you all."

Ironside then said, "It is not really necessary for me to have my fortune told, because I have had it told already. It is written in a book. I have the book in my pocket."

The gypsy was astonished. 'You have it in a book?" she said. 'Yes, said Ironside, "and it is absolutely infallible. Let me read it to you. He then reached in his pocket, pulled out his New Testament and began to read from chapter 2 of Ephesians: "'As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.' "That is my past," Ironsides said.

The woman had been startled when he pulled the New Testament from his pocket and now tried to get away. "That is plenty," she protested. "I do not want to hear more."

"But wait,' Ironside said. 'There is more. Here is my present, too: 'But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus .... '"

"No more," the gypsy protested.

"But," said Ironside, 'you must hear my future, and you are not going to have to pay me a quarter for it. I am giving it to you for nothing. It says, 'in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.'"

By now the gypsy was halfway down the aisle of the train, saying, "I took the wrong man!"

Christians are people whose past has been altered. Before, they were dead in sin; now they are alive in Christ. Their present has been altered, too. They have been awakened to the reality of God, the beauty of the Scriptures, and the presence of the Spirit of God in other Christians. Their’s is a whole new world. Finally, they have a changed future before them. For in time death will be overcome, and they will be raised in a new resurrection body, like the resurrection body of Jesus, and will be with the :Lord forever. That is true even if you happen to live in Southern California,

Are you a Christian? By all means, ask that question of yourself. Be sure of the answer. But when you are sure, be sure of this truth, too: that nothing in heaven or earth will ever separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and that your future will be even better than is your life with Jesus now.

If you do not have this hope, realize that the Bible talks a lot more about the way to heaven than about heaven itself. It makes it quite clear to those people who think they will go to heaven because they are more good than bad -- grading themselves on the curve -- good that they will be disappointed. Only those who lay their sins on Jesus will never be disappointed. Jesus lives, and they will live with Him--forever.

Now is the time to know, to trust, and to follow the One who said and meant it: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoever believes in me, even though he dies, will live; and every last one who lives and believes in me will most certainly never die forever and ever."