Beth-El Baptist Church

10/24/2010

Greg Tomlinson

Open: What kind of hope does the Christian have?

To many people the hope of the Christian can be confusing.

1. What kind of hope does the Christian have?

Romans 8:24-32

Paul talks about the hope of the Christian as being an unseen hope. Since it is unseen, we patiently wait for it with anticipation. It is a hope that is not like the world's hope or a “it would be nice” kind of hope, but it is an assured hope. It is a hope that is based upon the promises of God. Even with an assured hope, there are two realms in which this operates. There is the realm of the guarantee of the promise of God through Christ. In other words, is Jesus going to keep His word to His people. The other realm is the knowledge of the Christian concerning his ability to legitimately hold onto that hope.

John 10:27-30

Notice that Jesus states that the hope of the Christian is confirmed by hearing the voice of Christ. Having heard the voice of Christ, the Christian follows Jesus with the promise of eternal life. The promise is guaranteed by the willingness of Jesus and His Father to keep us and protect us in his own presence.

1 Corinthians 15:14-20

The validation of the the promise given by Jesus Christ is demonstrated by His resurrection from the dead. Because Jesus rose from the dead, we know that we shall likewise be risen from the dead. This is guaranteed because Jesus proclaimed his resurrection before it took place and then He demonstrated it when it actually took place. As a result, we can trust in the promises of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:1-9

The confirmation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be found in the eyewitnesses of His resurrection. At the time of the writing of the this letter by Paul, there were many outside of the leadership of this new faith who saw and are willing to testify to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of their testimony, we can be confident that we will likewise have life.

Romans 8:13-16

Further confirmation to the assured hope of the Christian is the fact that the Christian has received from God, the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit within that confirms the presence of God in the life of the Christian and thus his ability to stand assured of his eternal salvation.

Now there are some who will play games with the idea of their own assured hope. Whether it is the person who seems to wear his election of God as a type of badge of honor instead of a humbling reality or it is the person who seems to arrogantly proclaim “I am saved, are you?”. The difficulty is that we have not been called to be the judge of others but to learn to humbly serve God by serving others.

Jeremiah 23:33-40

One example of the lack of humility in claiming salvation is in the 1970's it seems that everybody was “born again”. It became a worn out word and an abused phrase. Even the producer of a porn magazine claimed to be “born again” when standing before a judge. After the judge refused to release him from jail, he began cussing out the judge. After later being released, he did not depart from his magazine but continued to promote the sexual abuse of women and others by objectifying the woman.

It can be difficult to deal with other people who seem to claim a form of Christianity while at the same time living a life that denies the power of God to change lives. Living in unrepentant and often self-justifying sin does not demonstrate the reality of God in your Life.