Every Saturday, Pastor Mike and Sherry write our congregation a letter of encouragement as well an introduction for the sermon topic he will preach the following morning. Below you will find the letter from October 5th, 2024. To watch this sermon, follow this link: Hope Abounding a sermon on Romans 15:13; How hope and endurance are related, and hope against hope when everything's falling apart.
Week of October 6, 2024
What happens to people when they lose hope? They give up. They quit. Hope and perseverance go together. Hope is a future promise that keeps us going. It is the carrot before the donkey. Hope knows that there is a goal, and that the goal is worth pursuing, even through hardship and difficulty. If we don't have hope, we won't have perseverance.
Paul writes in Romans 15 is that everything in the Scripture—by which he means what we call the Old Testament—was written to instruct us in the Christian hope. Throughout the Old Testament we see God's faithfulness despite man's sin. We see the saints going through times of suffering and discouragement. We see the saints exiled to the wilderness, with no apparent future. But we also see that in time, God brings them back for greater service than before. The kingdom of God never shrinks; it may flow underground for a season, but it always emerges mightier than before. God is never the loser in history!
Thus, with the encouragements of the Scripture before us, we should have hope. Also following God's example, we should encourage one another. Paul writes in Romans 15:5–6 that we encourage one another when we live in unity, without being at each other’s throats, and that a fundamental expression of that unity is worship. When we stand together to sing God's praises in the psalms and great hymns and prayers of the church, we encourage one another. The man who comes to worship downcast and beaten may emerge with new hope simply because of the unity of worship he has experienced.
Paul says that God gives endurance and encouragement. It is not just the history of redemption as recorded in the Bible that gives us encouragement. It is not just the continuing history of the church, which indeed shows growth over 2,000 years, that gives encouragement. Nor is it just the fellowship of other saints, in life and in praise, that gives encouragement. But it is primarily God Himself who gives us encouragement. If we lack endurance and hope, we need to learn more about the attributes and intentions of God; for the more we know Him, the more encouraged we will be.
So how does this hope work in our lives, how does this hope grow even when things seem nearly hopeless. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the secret to all this is to be found in Romans chapter 5. Look at it with me for a moment.
“Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God[f] has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5 (NET)
So, here’s how I think it all works together. You’re going along just great having been made righteous through your faith in Christ and rejoicing in the freedom that yours and the glory you are yet to attain. Then right in the midst of everything going really good you get smashed against the wall of some calamity, whatever it may be — cancer, a car wreck, loss of a job, the death of your a loved one, whatever. The result is your hope and joy are threatened, and you are tempted to turn away from God at this point. BUT, instead, the Holy Spirit empowers you to move through the tribulation and hang on like Abraham who has “hope against hope” and in a few months you come out on the other side believing. You come out on the other side, and you look back on the tribulation, the months of difficulty, and how you survived it, and you say, “I’m real! This Christian life is real and powerful. I didn’t throw it away.” Hope feeds on that assurance. Hope feeds on that endurance and the approval you sense from the in working of the Holy Spirit.
I think that’s the idea here. Of course, hope is at the front end, and it produces joy and peace. But when joy and peace abound through the troubles of life, hope abounds more and more because it feeds on its own fruit. So “be Steadfast and Immovable” always abounding in Hope. In closing I’d like to join the Apostle Paul in my prayer for you and simply say, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you believe in him, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).
All Our Love, Mike and Sherry
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