Do you have hope? Hope – you may say – yes, I have hope. What do you hope for? Long life and good health? Satisfaction in what you do and in your relationships with others? Those are good things, but what does your hope mean to you when you meet the uncertainties and disappointments of life? Do you have hope in ill-health, in adversity, in loss, in the face of death itself?

The Christian hope:

This Book offers hope: For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us – so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures – we might have hope. (Rom 15:4)

What kind of hope is Paul talking about? Not a wistful, ‘fingers-crossed’ sort of hope. But an assurance that rests on God’s known character. Known to us through what God has already done in the past – especially in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And known to us through present personal experience, if we’ve learned to trust God and have committed our lives to him. Have we discovered that God can be relied upon, that he is a God who gives endurance and encouragement? We have his promises – so our hope can be solidly based in God and not in man.

What, then, is our basic Christian hope? A hope of resurrection from the dead – so that death is the gateway to life, the life of God – in a world restored and put to rights. A hope of glory, of being changed. The blessed hope of the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.. (Titus 2:13) Has the Good News of Jesus Christ brought us this hope?

A rich Italian was given a New Testament by a Christian. I don’t know what to do with it, was his response. But when they next met, the Italian had this story to tell: When you gave me that book, I put it in my car, but I never read it. Then one day I had an accident. While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, I picked up the New Testament, as I looked for my car’s registration document. I opened it and read, “We brought nothing into the world and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Timothy 6:7) It was as if I’d been struck by lightning – because I realised I could have died in the accident! What would my money have been worth, if I had had to appear before God? From that time I started to read the whole New Testament. And that led to his fully receiving Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour.

God brings his Word alive:

We have a great God, a living God, active and challenging. Perhaps when we least expect it, he brings his Word alive and speaks to us through it. When we come to church, when we read our Bible – do we come to it, open and ready to receive what he has to say to us?

A Jewish acquaintance of ours grew up in New York, although he now lives in Israel. At his Bar Mitzvah, when he was 13, God spoke to him from Ezekiel 36:26-28, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you.. You will live in the land I gave your forefathers. But as he grew older he turned his back on Orthodox Judaism. Instead, a love of sports, and a love of humanist philosophy, took over – he belonged to the hippy generation.

Then at the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, when according to tradition God judges mankind – Shmuel was arrested because he was cultivating a field of marijuana, and went to prison for 3 days. Released on probation, he began to read his Jewish prayer book. God touched him and he began again to believe in the God of his fathers.

He taught in school to avoid being drafted for Vietnam, and used his lunch breaks to read the Bible. One day, he read, The Lord heard my cry and lifted me out of the slimy pit...he set my feet on a rock.. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust. (Psa 40:1-4) He didn’t know what that meant, but felt he must rely on God alone. To his head’s astonishment, he resigned from his job, to begin a new life.

The following week, as he was browsing in a bookshop, he saw a picture – it was Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. He knew it showed Jesus and his disciples – but couldn’t understand why they were celebrating the Passover – a Jewish feast. He found a New Testament and began to read it – and was astonished to find that Jesus was a Jew. He read on, deeply affected. He asked himself, Who is this Jesus? When he came to the crucifixion, God supplied the answer through the words nailed above Jesus’ head, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. (Matt 27:37) Suddenly he saw Jesus as his King, dying for him – and he burst into tears, completely overwhelmed. When eventually he could read on, he read of Jesus’ resurrection. It was completely new to him. He was just filled with joy and danced around his room. At that hour he handed over his whole life to Jesus as his Lord and Messiah.

The God of endurance and encouragement:

Maybe, like these two people, you too have been brought by God to know his love, his forgiveness, his peace – through his Son, Jesus Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, active in our lives and circumstances. But have we, perhaps, allowed our first excited love for him to grow cold? Have we allowed other things to become central in our lives, where our Lord Jesus alone should reign? Has tragedy or disappointment robbed us of joy and hope?

If so – we need to meet again the God of endurance and encouragement, who has given us, in this Book, words to renew our trust in him, to guide and encourage us – to give us joy and hope again. Like the young man, Joshua, who was commanded to meditate on God’s words day and night, we need to do that – and to hear God saying to us, Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged – for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. (Josh 1:9)

As a young man I found myself in Canada for a year, at a Canadian university. In order to do that, I had had to leave my wife and two small children at home in England. Two weeks after I arrived in Calgary, a letter and telegram came, telling me that my wife had had an operation for breast cancer. It was not easy to experience any peace in that situation, despite evidences around me that God loved and cared for me.

I found it helpful to remind myself constantly of God’s promises – I wrote them down and stuck them up where I could see them – and remind God of them! One verse was, Great peace have they who love your law and nothing can make them stumble. (Psa 119:165) Another was, When I said, “My foot is slipping”, your love, O LORD, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul. (Psa 94:17-18) When I pleaded such words with our Lord – and often I had to do it again and again – I gradually became aware of his power and love supporting me, my wife and family. What I had known in theory about God’s character was made real to me.

Three years later my wife died. God’s love and understanding were brought home to me, when he reminded me of an incident in the life of Ezekiel, who lived among Jews taken from Israel to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. God had chosen Ezekiel to explain to his fellow Jews the meaning of their exile – and to inform them that news would come to them of the destruction of Jerusalem and of their beloved temple. They were to know this was God’s doing, because of the sin of his people.

And this was to be foreshadowed by the death of Ezekiel’s wife, and the manner of his mourning for her. What struck me however – was the tenderness and understanding God showed to Ezekiel. Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament, or weep, or shed any tears. Groan quietly, do not mourn for the dead... (Ezek 24:16-17)

In many different ways – according to our individual needs, temperaments and circumstances – the God of endurance and encouragement will speak to us through his Word.

By the way, that word ‘endurance’ – doesn’t mean a Stoic patience, a bowed, submissive spirit grimly waiting for the worst – but rather a spirit that bears things because it knows they lead to glory. It radiantly awaits the dawn. It keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It isn’t something we can find within us – it is given by God. He uses our experiences so that we can know him better, trust him more, and strengthen our hope in him. Earlier in his letter Paul wrote, Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Rom 5:5) To know God better, is to love and trust him more.

Choosing God’s pattern for our lives:

But we always have a choice. Confronted with God’s Word – we can accept its message – whether of comfort or rebuke, strengthening or challenging – or can we refuse it. The context of our reading today from Paul’s letter – was a plea for churchmembers to love one another – not to hurt each other, and the whole church – by thoughtlessly disregarding the consciences of brethren who could not go along with the abandonment of Jewish dietary laws. [Sometimes we have to move at a slower pace in what we believe God wants us to do – so that we carry everyone along with us in loving unity.]

One day those in the synagogue at Nazareth had a choice, as they listened to Jesus. As he declared that the Old Testament Scripture was being fulfilled in him, his fellow-townsmen could only say, Isn’t this Joseph’s son?(Luke 4:22) And when Jesus reminded them that no prophet is accepted in his own town – but that God’s mercy is unmerited, and reaches out beyond the bounds men would set – their unbelief turned to fury, and they tried to kill him. (Luke 4:16-30)

Which leads me to ask again – are we open to what God might say to us? That day in Nazareth God was allowing the pattern of his rescue plan to be foreshadowed. His way for Jesus lay through rejection and death at the hands of his own people (as well as Gentile hands, too). God’s incredible love for us embraces our rejection of him – and makes it the means of our forgiveness and reconciliation.

And as Paul makes it clear here (Each of us should please his neighbour for his good, to build him up. For even Christ did not please himself..) and elsewhere (Rom 12:1; 1 Cor 25-30; 2 Cor 4:10-12; Gal 5:24; Eph 4:32; Phil 2:3-11) this is to be the pattern of our lives also. We are to love others to the point of sacrifice. Why? Because in our Lord we have – not only an example to follow – but also his loving welcome of us – and the sure hope that Jesus’ victory will be ours also. What is he asking of us today? Perhaps, not some great thing – but something near at hand – loving our wife or husband more – or our neighbour!

Giving God’s Word a place in our daily lives:

In what I’ve said today, I trust you will have seen that God uses his written Word to speak to us, bringing salvation, bringing comfort and the strength to endure, bringing hope when we might despair, and bringing us challenge to follow our Lord and become like him. If you don’t already read a little of his Word each day – and chew it over! – why not begin to do so now?

Do you realise what a privilege we have here? In many parts of the world, only the pastor may have a Bible. Others may have none, or only a portion, perhaps written out by hand. In some places in China – where the church is growing so rapidly – 100 Christians have to share a single Bible between them. The Chinese government has, wonderfully, given permission for the printing there of 3.5 million more Bibles, if Bible Societies around the world will provide the paper. A sum of 30€ provides the paper for 40 Bibles! There’s a challenge to us, if we love our Bibles.

One Chinese brother there said, As human beings, we cannot live without food; as Christians, we cannot live without the Bible. One 70-year-old Chinese woman walked for 3 hours in sub-zero temperatures – because that day free Bibles were being given out to her congregation. She couldn’t stop smiling or singing! It was her second Bible. The first was 20 years old, battered with daily reading, missing a substantial section of Genesis, that had simply fallen out.

Reading the Bible is like having God talk to you, she says. Jin earns her living as a watermelon grower, but always suffered from travel sickness on the long bus journey into town to sell her wares. One day I prayed, she recalled, “Lord, if you let me not feel sick on this journey, I will take whatever I earn today and buy a Bible. I didn’t feel sick and I bought a Bible [that was her first one]. After a year I was baptized and changed my name. It means ‘God’s love’.

How many of us – or our contemporaries – have a Bible, largely unopened or unread? At the Last Day – will there not be weeping, when the poor ones of the earth stand up and rebuke us? They may only have had a Gospel – but used it to enter a living relationship with the Lord Jesus. May we really ask God to speak to us through this Book, to reveal himself to us, so that we may have real hope.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Rom 15:13)