HOPE WAIT AND REST

HOPE MEANS TO WAIT AND REST

There is no medicine like HOPE - the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today.

And for the Christian that hope is no idle dream. Our future can brim with expectation because of Jesus’ promise,    “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”(John 14:3)

But in the meantime we need the daily reminder and encouragement that our waiting is not in vain.

HOPE is the Hebrew word yahal/yachal which means to WAIT, to REST in expectation, to REMAIN STATIONARY until the arrival of some PERSON or EVENT. For believers the PERSON is Jesus our HOPE (1Ti 1:1) and the EVENT is His Second Coming (Titus 2:13) which includes the consummation of our salvation and our "adoption as sons, the redemption of our body" (glorification - Ro 8:23-note).

And so HOPE is not hype but is a very real and ever present invitation to look ahead eagerly and with confident expectation that the best is yet to come.

Corrie Ten Boom said it this way "LOOK AROUND AND BE DISTRESSED. LOOK INSIDE AND BE DEPRESSED. LOOK AT JESUS (our hope ) AND BE AT REST.”

Indeed we must continually fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb 12:2), for outside of Him, there is no hope! We need to recall that Jesus understands what we are experiencing for He Himself said "My soul is DEEPLY GRIEVED  to the point of death," (Mt 26:38) and thus He is able to "sympathize with our weaknesses." (Heb 4:15-note).

As John Piper says “we must fight the fight of faith (1Ti 1:18, 1Ti 6:12, 2Ti 4:7). We must PREACH to our SOULS a sermon of hope…We must SET BEFORE OUR OWN SOUL THE BANQUET OF PROMISES that God has made to us and FEED our faith to the full (Ro 10:17-note, Mt 4:4, 1Pe 2:2-note). Then it may be said of us as it was of Stephen and Barnabas: “They were filled with faith and with the Holy Spirit." (Acts 6:5, Acts 11:24)”

He Is Risen

Christians do not follow a dead man; they worship the risen Christ.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is absolutely central to the Christian faith. If the resurrection is removed the whole edifice of Christianity collapses into a pile of dust. Christian preaching is useless, Christian faith is futile, the Christian claim of forgiveness is rendered void, the Christian hope of heaven is a make believe.

As St. Paul said, “If Christ wasn’t raised to life, our message is worthless and so is our faith. If the dead won’t be raised to life, we have told lies about God by saying that he raised Christ to life when he really did not…Unless Christ was raised to life your faith is useless and you are still living in your sins. And those people who died after putting their faith in him are completely lost. If our hope in Christ is good only for this life, we are worse off than anyone else.” (1Corinthians 15;14-15; 17-19)

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, the belief in God's saving grace through Jesus is destroyed. When Jesus rose from the dead, he confirmed his identity as the Son of God and his work of atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and salvation. The resurrection was a real, literal, physical raising of Jesus’ body from the dead.

Both the Old and the New Testament speak of the truth of the Jesus being raised from death - Jesus testified of his resurrection before he died on the cross and his disciples witnessed his body after the resurrection. 

The Gospel of Mark gives this direct account of the fact and reality of the resurrection:

“1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just  sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, ‘Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?’4 But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. 6 ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’ “(Mark 16:1-7)

Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself  declares  in no uncertain terms, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)

My friend come to Christ today, surrender your life to him, believe in him, the Risen Savior who is able to save.

Happy Resurrection Day.

NO BETTER ANSWER

NO BETTER ANSWER

Of all the challenges thrown at Christianity in modern times, perhaps the most difficult is explaining the problem of suffering.

How can a loving God allow suffering to continue in the world which He created?

Scottish Philosopher David Hume puts it this way:

“Were a stranger to drop suddenly into this world, I would show him as a specimen of its ills a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a filed strewn with carcasses, a fleet floundering in the ocean, nation languishing under tyranny, famine or pestilence. Honestly I don’t see how you can possibly square with an ultimate purpose of love.”

As a counterpoint, here is GK Chesterton, English Philosopher, and lay Theologian:

“When belief in God is difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him; but in Heaven’s name to what?”

To the Christian believer, he cannot deny that a meaningful answer can be found. But has the one who denies God found a better answer to his own question?

The point is this: if we remove God and affirm that he does not exist because he couldn’t do anything about it why blame him? It is pointless to discuss the morality of suffering or evil or talk about right and wrong or what is good and bad in this world if God did not exist. If everything simply happened by chance then everything is neither good nor evil; we just have to take things as it is and coast along this fatalistic void, for there is no point in making sense out of it. It is irrational for one to cry out for love, sympathy, mercy or justice if one views life as a mere chance occurrence or the product of happenstance. All he could do, is do what he thinks is right in his own eyes.     

Christian theism is, in fact, the only worldview which can consistently make sense of the problem of evil and suffering. Christians serve a God who has lived on this earth and endured trauma, temptation, bereavement, torture, hunger, thirst, persecution and even execution.

The cross of Christ can be regarded as the ultimate manifestation of God’s justice. When asked how much God cares about the problem of evil and suffering, the Christian God can point to the cross and say, “That much.” Christ experienced physical pain as well as feelings of rejection and abandonment. He experienced the same suffering as many people today who know the bitterness of isolation, pain, and anguish.