Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon
Romans 4:17-21, “As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed-the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead- since he was about a hundred years old- and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”
To ‘hope against hope’ is to have hope even when the situation appears to be hopeless…
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all...As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. (G.K. Chesterton, Signs of the Times, April 1993, p. 6)
What causes hopeless?
· Powerless to dream… Hopeless sets in when you are just getting by and trying to be content with status-quo. But, you are aching because you know deep down inside of you that you are created for something more; you are created to dream beyond what seems possible because you know God. Yet, you have lost the ability to dream. You no longer think in what’s possible. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God “has set eternity in the hearts of men.” You are made for eternity, but you have lost your way and you don’t dream any more. Busyness, trying to survive and get through, even the entertainments bore you now... You no longer dream and you are hopeless.
· Powerless to know where you are going… when you feel lost, when you don’t know where you are going, when you cannot see the big picture, when you are not driven by God given purpose in life you lose meaning.
· Powerless to change… It’s been too long since you saw real changes. Nothing is changing and you’ve been slowly sinking into the deep hole of hopelessness because you feel powerless to see any meaningful change.
· Powerless against setbacks… When you are defeated, when you mess up, when life turns for worse, it also cause hopeless.
What causes you to feel hopeless about your life? What makes you feel hopeless about the state of your family? What makes you feel hopeless about our church, about our nation?
When God stepped into Abraham’s life, God spoke in the language of promise of what he was going to do. He was going to raise Abraham to be the father of nations, to bless all people, all nations through him. When God spoke in this language of promise, sure certainty, it was as though God set his eternity into Abraham’s heart. How could he an old man 100 years old, how could Sarah his wife beyond human possibility to get pregnant at 90, how could he, how could she dream the possibility to have a child, to dream the birth of many nations? … The present reality, the human impossibility, was so far off from what God said he was going to do through Abraham. One without faith would brush God off as making a cruelest and insane joke.
But, it was far worse in those and agonizing dark days when Jesus’ dead body was put away in the tomb. There is nothing in the world that can compete against the lethal power of death to destroy hope. Death is like great flood that wipes away anything and everything in its path. Death is like great fire that burn down homes with memories into rubbles and smokes. Death is like catastrophic engine failures and structural failures that impair an flying airplane to nose-dive to destruction. Death leaves casualties of hopelessness.
Yet, on this Easter Day, God has set eternity into the hearts of men and women like he has never done before. When death seemed to have the final say, when death seemed to have pronounce all is lost and gone, when death seemed to have destroyed any hope, God broke into the darkness moment of history. But, it was like the sun rising from the east and the darkness couldn’t hold it back.
Just like that God broke into the powerlessness to dream, powerlessness to make sense out of meaninglessness, powerlessness to change, powerless against setbacks. Just like that God broke into the dark present reality with his eternity. And, the history has never been the same since then.
I believe that just like the way God evoked Abraham and Sarah to dream that which was humanly impossible, just like the way God brushed Abraham and Sarah with eternity, he is doing that with you and me. God wants you to know today that he has power to do what had promised to do with your life, in your family, in our church, in our nation, in our world. You will not thwart God’s sovereign purpose. Your choice is either to yield to his purpose and welcome it in faith or you reject his purpose and descend into hopeless death. Romans 8:28–30 says,
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
God’s goal is that you share in his glory as Jesus shares in the Father’s glory. It is the purpose beyond time boundary. Before you were born, while you were little like the babies today, while you were children like my older girls, while you were teenagers, now as grownup adults, God’s purpose is that you be conformed into the likeness of Christ and lived for God’s glory, get on with the Father’s business!
Church, brothers and sisters in Christ, today God has set his eternity in your heart. So, set your heart on something far greater and far glorious beyond your present situations. Don't be defined by powerlessness to dream, inability to see where you are going, powerlessness to change and powerlessness to fight against setbacks. It is time to rise and to march with Christ. Don’t let the present reality defines you. Let the Great I AM of eternity defines your today. Set your eyes on God’s purpose to conform you to the image of Jesus, to embark on his mission to bring glory to God.
So, as apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:14,
Church, I charge you today, “Wake up, O Sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.”
No comments:
Post a Comment