It was a bit sad and strange to sit with them. They were a married couple, but their relationship didn't seem like a marriage. It didn't seem like a relationship of unity and love and understanding. There was distance and misunderstanding and hurt. Their house was not a home; it was more a motel. And yet the strange thing was that they seemed strangely satisfied. They seemed to have developed the ability to make things work that were never intended to work. And I sat with them one morning, and it hit me that the reason they had become satisfied, the reason they were making things work that were never intended to work, is because they lacked hope.
If You Don't Have Hope, You Quit
See, if you don't have hope, you quit dreaming; you quit praying; you quit working; you quit trying. In a world that's terribly broken, as people who yet still have brokenness inside of us, hope for us is not a luxury - hope for us is a necessity. Do you have hope this morning? Maybe it's in your marriage that you need hope. You see, hope in a marriage is not because you're wise or you're smart. That's not where I find hope in my marriage, because I'm not smart (thankfully, no one said amen). Hope in your marriage is not found because you're married to a perfectly godly person, because you are actually still a flawed person married to a flawed person.
Hope in your marriage is not found because you're surrounded by circumstances that are always easy, because in the brokenness of the world, that brokenness will press in on your marriage. What gives you hope in parenting, that task that seems so demanding and so seemingly unending? Where is hope to be found when it seems like I'm having that same conversation now for the thousandth time? I had a parent recently say to me, "Okay, Paul, when will Christian discipline work for my child?" I gave them my deepest, most theological answer: "I don't know, but I know this - the God who called you to that is worth placing your hope in."
Maybe you're struggling with something inside of you that you know is wrong, and you've tried all kinds of attempts at confession and repentance, and you seem so easily seduced again. What makes you get up and say, "I will fight this thing one more time?" Maybe it's physical things that you're facing you didn't think you would face. Where do you have hope in the midst of those discouraging circumstances where you fear the next medical report? Maybe it's that you're at a university, and you feel like you must be the only believer there, and you wonder how you can make it through the years of your study.
Or maybe it's just your weariness at the range of responsibilities that are on your plate, and you feel tired and exhausted; you wish you could just exit it all. You see, hope isn't a luxury; it's a necessity! What this morning gives you reason for going on? Well, we end our summer series on Hebrews with the last two verses of Hebrews 11. This series on Hebrews 11 and faith - page 1008 in your church Bibles. And as the writer of Hebrews makes summary comments about these people of faith that he's used as his example to help us to understand what faith is and what faith does, he makes powerful connections for us between faith and hope.
Let me read these words, verse 39: And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. (ESV) Look at that first phrase: "And all these, though commended through their faith." What were these examples of faith commended for? What is this thing called 'faith' that is lifted up in this chapter? Are these people just commended for their theology, that they had the right belief system, that they thought properly and Biblically about life, that they came to understand the doctrine of Scripture?
Now, I would not for a minute do anything to disrespect the stunning wisdom of the theology of the Word of God. It is life to us; it makes us to know how to think. But we must understand that theology was never given as an end in itself. That theology is a means to an end. That theology is meant to form a radical way of living because at the epicenter of that theology is a God who is able to do what He has promised. And so the life of faith is actually a life of hope that's lived at ground level where I live every day, because I believe that the Lord, Creator, Sovereign, King has invaded my life by the grace of His Son, and because of that, I am now the recipient of His promises, and I do believe that what He has promised me, He is willing and able to deliver.
Amen on Sunday, Amen on Tuesday
Now I would ask you this morning, "Do you believe that?" Now, I don't want to decry the 'amens' in the room. But they're easy on Sunday. But is your life an 'amen' to that on Tuesday, when your child has, for the fifteenth time in a row, defied your parental authority; when what seemed to be a comfortable conversation with your husband and wife has now exploded into an argument; when the unexpected bill is now sitting on your desk, and you don't know how you're going to pay it? Are you living a life of hope?
Not hope in physical things, not hope in the people around you; hope that's rooted in the reality and the presence of a God who's in you and with you and for you? Is your life a life of hope, and where do you live that? In the mundane little circumstances of your everyday life. And so I'll have that conversation with my child once again, that one I've had a hundred times because I hope in God. I will go to my wife, and we will re-have that conversation. We will ask forgiveness one more time, and we'll press forward one more time.
I will not quit; I will not relent because I believe in God. I believe that He is! I believe that He rewards those who seek Him. I have hope! Are you living that? Do you believe that? Does it get you up in the morning? Does it take you places that you wouldn't go? Why would Gideon, a man who was afraid, take 300 soldiers with the weirdest battle plan in the history of military conflict (let's break pitchers and scream) do such a thing? There is only one explanation: hope in God. He believed that this God who promised to deliver those enemies into their hands, that that God was with them and for them; he had reasons to go into that battle.
What would make David walk down, a shepherd boy with nothing more than sling and five stones, to face that mighty warrior, Goliath, the man who mocks him as he walks into the valley, and says, "Am I a dog that you'd bring me sticks?" Hope in God. What enabled Samuel to speak the truth of God with such courage even though he knew it would make people angry? Hope in God. You can't separate faith from hope. Faith is living hope in God. Now notice what it says next; it says, "...all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised."
What? After all that, were they ripped off? What does that mean? After all of that investment and hoping in God, they didn't get it? You have to ask, "What that means?" That seems scary. Is this just a great joke? God gets us and we die before we get what He promised? Now here's why we think that: because we don't understand waiting. If you're hoping, it means by the very nature of that that you are waiting. I would ask you to think: how many hands do you think would be raised this morning if we took a poll of how many of you just love to wait?
You see, because we don't actually have a Biblical theology of waiting. Scripture would teach us that waiting is not just about what you get at the end of your wait, as if waiting is sort of meaningless, and meaning will come at the end of the wait. As if during the wait, you're passive and God's passive, and you're just marking your time till the good stuff happens. Now I want to say to you as clearly as I can: that is a dramatically un-biblical view of waiting. The Bible would teach us that waiting is about also what you become as you wait, that the process of waiting is not just waiting for good things to be delivered; waiting is a delivery system of good things.
Changed by Grace While Waiting
And so these saints, although they died before all the promises were fulfilled, were radically changed by the grace of God as they waited. They were actually getting the good stuff of His grace as they waited. Waiting is not meaningless; waiting is a beautiful tool in the hands of a beautiful Savior. Let me just depict for you two ways that these people were changed. Here's the first one, this makes such sense when you begin to think about it: one of the great things that waiting does for you is it reminds you that you're not in charge.
You are never impatient when you're waiting for you! You don't mind waiting for you. Your struggle with waiting is because waiting reminds you that you're not sovereign, that you don't rule, that your life has been absorbed into something that's vastly bigger than you, that you are not 'the something,' but you've been made part of something by God's grace. Waiting informs you: "it's not all about you!" And in so doing, waiting drives you toward worship, because you begin to submit to the reality that there's someone in control of my world and it's not me.
That is such a precious thing to get a hold of. Because we, in our sin, want to be ultimate, and we want to be in control, and we want our way. And we're confronted in waiting with the fact that God is, and He rules, and life is found in submitting to His plan. There's a second thing: waiting transforms you as you wait. It changes your heart. I love what it says about Abraham in Romans 4. It says that as Abraham was waiting those many years for that promised son to be born, that he grew strong in faith as he meditated on God's power and God's faithfulness to deliver His promise.
God means as we wait for selfish people to become serving people, for rebellious people to become obedient people, for fearful people to become courageous people. He is applying His grace to us in the tool of waiting to transform us, to form us into the image of His son, the Lord Jesus. And you see that in the stories even in this passage. You see Moses, once running for his own safety, now standing with courage in front of Pharaoh, the most powerful human leader of Moses's generation, and commanding in the name of Almighty God that Pharaoh release all the Israelite slaves.
You see change. You see, as your waiting for God, you're not just waiting passively and God's passive hoping that somehow, some way, good things will happen. God is active around you, and in you, and through you; and God, in the way, is delivering the good things of His grace to you. Hear this: waiting is not waiting for grace - waiting is grace. These people weren't ripped off; they were blessed. Their stories are stories of blessing. They accomplished more than you ever would think that these people would have ever accomplished because they were willing to wait on God.
Notice what it says next: "...since God had provided something better for us." Hope always looks for something better. Now, I'm afraid that for all of us this side of eternity, there is a tendency for us to be all too easily satisfied. I don't think that the big crisis in the church of Jesus Christ is dissatisfaction. I would propose that perhaps the crisis in the church of Jesus Christ is satisfaction. We're willing to stop before the destination. We're willing to, somehow, make things work that don't work.
And so examples that I've given before: a husband and wife, rather than saying there's something better for us because God is in us, and God is with us, and God is for us, and we're going to work until we actually begin to experience the kind of community in our marriage that was described in Scripture, somehow we stop and we begin to construct this weird thing that's more marital d‚Äötente than marital unity. We learn to stay out of one another's way, and we learn not to go where things may become tense, and we measure our words, and we edit ourselves, but it's not marriage; it's not unity; it's not even close to one flesh.
Satisfied With What You Should Not Be
I would ask you this morning as your pastor: could it be that you're satisfied with things you should not be satisfied with? If you're a parent and you've asked your child to do something, and their body moves, but they yell at you as they're walking down the hallway, you should not name that as obedience, because, although the body is moving, the heart is raging against your authority. You should want something better. You should work for something better in the life of that child. If you're having struggles in your relationship with your neighbor, perhaps your best choice is not a six-foot privacy fence from Home Depot.
Perhaps it is to look for any way you can to incarnate the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Be willing to suffer, but you suffer in hope! Maybe the best choice is not to keep your mouth shut at your university, hoping you can stay out of trouble there, and you can be a committed member of the secret order of the saints. Maybe you ought to write that term paper that actually does give your worldview. You embrace better! Look around - this world needs better, and we're the people who should believe in better!
Now let's look at this a little bit historically here. What was the better that was needed for these Old Testament saints? It wasn't just the better of circumstances. The better that they hungered for, the better that every sacrifice pointed toward, the better that every victory and every revelation to every prophet pointed to was the better of a person, and His name is the Lord Jesus. What those Old Testament saints and that culture groaned for was the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, that at a certain point in time, the Messiah would come, and He would bring salvation in His hands.
And that He would be the Lamb Priest King and by His broken body and shed blood, He would give us reason for hope because we believe that evil can be defeated, don't we? And so today, we do not make wrong, we do not make failure, we do not make sin, we do not make iniquity, something we learn to live with, because we believe in the better of redemption in Christ Jesus. We stand in the same place because, although we are now the recipients of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that we live in this moment between the 'already' and the 'not yet.' And we know that sin still exists, and we know that suffering still exists; we know that brokenness still exists, and we long for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Do you? Every time you see a homeless person, you should long for the coming of Jesus. Every time you're part of another argument that you didn't intend to be part of, you should long for the coming of Jesus. Every time you go through a moment of tension, you should long for the coming of Jesus. Every time there's pain in your physical body, you should long for the coming of Jesus. Every time you have a thought or desire that's wrong in the eyes of God, you should long for the coming of Jesus. You should long; you should long; you should long for the coming of Jesus.
This is not all there is. Brothers and sisters, there is better to come - long! Listen, as you long for Jesus, that longing changes you; because as you long for what He can bring, you are less tolerant of what is around you, and you want to be part of the good that He would do. Oh no, you don't think you're going to bring in His kingdom, but you want to live in a way that's consistent with His will and His way. There's no such thing as faith without hope. There's no such thing as hope that doesn't call you to wait.
Hope Hopes for Completion
There's no such thing as hope that doesn't crave for what is better. One final phrase here: "...that apart from us they should not be made perfect." Hope hopes for completion. Are you restless, dissatisfied, or uncomfortable? Do you crave for that moment when there will be no more sin, and there will be no more suffering, and there will be no more pain, and there will be no more division, and there will be no more sorrow--when God will have fully accomplished everything He set forth to accomplish?
Do you pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?" I get up in the morning, and I try and I wrestle and I pray and I fight one more time, because I believe that this world, by the will of God, is marching, not to demise, it's marching to glorious conclusion. God's will will be done. The meek will inherit the earth, and every moment of hope will be worth it. I would ask you again this morning, "Are you a person of hope?" No, I'm not asking, "Does it warm your heart when you sing on Sunday morning, "Great is Thy Faithfulness?"
I would imagine it does. Or it stimulates you spiritually when you sing, "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness?" those are wonderful moments. But I wonder if on a Tuesday night, when the circumstances are dark and you feel alone, if you rise up on Wednesday morning with hope because what you hope in has not changed with the circumstances because your hope is in God. There is no more powerful argument for hope than in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says in Romans 8, "If God did not spare his Son, will he not also with him freely give us all things?"
There is reason for hope! And yes, the world is broken, and you will be disappointed, and you will be tired, and you will have moments of fear, but don't give in, don't quit, don't run, don't hide. God is, and if you're His child, He is your Father and there is reason for hope. Let's Pray: Lord, we would confess to You that we do find it difficult to wait--sometimes, seemingly impossible to hope. And we understand that Your plan is not an event; it's a process that what You begin in one generation, You complete in another.
These verses capture that very well. And yet we believe that You are in us; we believe that You're with us; we believe that You are for us as Your children. That You are Lord and King and Savior; that You have the power and You have the willingness to deliver to us everything that You promised, and so there's reason for hope. Lord, I would pray particularly for someone who may be in this room this morning who has never placed hope in You, won't You give them the grace, the willingness of heart, the courage of faith, to do that even if it's the first time this morning.
Lord, may we be willing to wait. May we believe in something better in a way that activates us, and may we wrestle and be restless and dissatisfied until everything that You've promised has been fully accomplished. We pray these things for the sake of Your children, for the furtherance of Your Kingdom, and for the praise of Your glory. In Jesus's name, Amen.
