When Hope Thrives

 

Text: Romans 5:1-5

Focus:

Function:

5:¹Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Good morning to the beloved of God.

Today we are going to look at some of the theology of the Church given to us in the book of Romans. In this passage, Paul talks to us about the power of hope. Remember, in 1 Corinthians 13, the great chapter of Love, he reminds us the there are three pillars to Christianity: Faith, Hope and Love, the greatest of which is love.

I preach love almost exclusively since Jesus made that his most important commandment but when I think of Faith, Hope and Love together, I get the image of a three legged stool, serving Christ isn’t going to work without all three legs providing support.

So today, let us see how hope supports us in our journey to love God by loving others.

He explains that our relationship with God doesn’t come by obeying all the rules of the Old Testament. It come by trusting God with our lives and resting in God’s promises and living by faith in God which justifies us before God.

Remember, it is a three legged stool, faith, hope and love.

About love: Jesus spends most of his teaching ministry explaining and demonstrating just how far love goes in our journey together with God.

Love is important, but one of the main reasons why we love is because we have hope in God’s promises to keep us in God’s love regardless of the circumstances of our lives. So he speaks of how suffering and trials bring us closer to God.

Paul explains all this in chapter 4 based on the life of Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith. Abraham loved others in obedience to God and lived his life trusting that God would take care of him.

And it was at great risk since the world was populated with tribal nation states and the only way to be safe and not be exploited as a foreigner was to not be a foreigner. And yet, in response to God’s call, he left the security of his home among the God-fearing people of UR, which is now Northern Iraq and journeyed to the land of Canaan which is now Israel, where the people did not live as if God would judge their actions.

That last statement is important. Part of living by faith was living with the knowledge that God will ultimately judge whether or not our actions are just and loving and therefore we live in what is called the fear or respect of God. Proverbs calls this true wisdom.

So, Abraham takes risks based on God’s promises and gives us the pattern of life that lives by faith in God’s promises in spite of his circumstances.

And the neat thing about Abraham is that although God gave him faith, sometimes he screwed it up and didn’t trust God enough and let fear control him. Then he relied on himself and got in trouble. But God still kept their promise to him and blessed him.

That is the faith element of the three legged stool and it isn’t possible without hope.

Love is the action element of the stool, faith and hope are the spiritual blessings endowed on us by God to help us love.

It is important to remember that these three elements of our spiritual walk come from God and are not manufactured by our own imaginations or willpower. It is a gift of God. It is God’s Spirit leading us to have faith, to rest in God and it is God’s Spirit leading us to have the hope to allow the faith to work through love.

I was going to mention that hope and faith are something we have a choice to allow in our lives. They are something we have some sort of control over.

But I was reading our current copy of Messenger, the COB publication and this one focuses on Hope.

Don Fitzke, moderator elect at our Annual conference wrote an article that places it in a better perspective considering the fact that hope is not something we manufacture, it is a move of the Spirit and God is the one who gives it.

So what choice to we have if God gives it and we can’t make it happen? Although, we can choose to accept or reject God’s gifts to us, that isn’t the point. Don Fitzke’s article points out that it is more than a choice, it is more like a muscle that we exercise. Hope is a spiritual muscle that we develop and strengthen. Sometimes through trials.

I think the idea is picked up when the text says that we boast in hope of sharing in the glory of God.

Paul speaks of our own tests and afflictions. Do we have hope in the midst of trials?

Trials can be painful at the time, but my experience is that God does something in the end that we did not expect or plan on. He is reminding us that God can use these trials to draw us closer to them.

What is cool about Abraham is that sometimes Abraham lost faith in the midst of a test and God still kept him safe anyway because could see his heart wanted to love and please God.

True wisdom is when someone lives their life acknowledging the fact that God ultimately cares and will reward that person based on the way they love others.

Don Fitzke’s article also mixed the metaphor about resistance and hope being a muscle and muscles need resistance to grow and thrive. Our hope should lead us to resist evil as well.

Jesus resisted evil to the point of his own death and has called us to take up our cross and resist as well.

It takes faith and hope to resist. Love is going to make demands of us, sometimes even sacrifice for the welfare of the other.

For example, in 2016, when the Governor said he would ban Muslims, the Church I served, Hope Church, by the way, decided to sponsor a Muslim family with the hope of saving their lives before the ban took place. They knew that Love requires action.

And it was a real blessing to us. We got to know the Muslim family well. It cost us hundreds of hours of volunteer time as we helped them learn the bus system, how to drive, how to apply for school, and we also provided all the furnishings in their home for their family of 5.

Some criticized us for helping people whom they believed to be enemies of the faith. But we knew that it is love that softens hearts and draws people to God.

We resisted, but not with violence. By welcoming the stranger, we danced upon injustice.

It was a sacrifice of time and somewhat a risk of credibility to our community, but obedience to Christ is living by faith and demands of love. And that resistance that we felt? It merely served to exercise our muscles of faith and hope.

When hope thrives we strengthen our faith and our love as our obedience to Christ by the power of the Spirit fills our lives.