LOOKING TO OUR HOPE

You occasionally hear God blamed for the condition of the world because He created Adam and Eve already knowing they would sin and plunge all of us into darkness.

Of course you have to consider that God also knew the hope set before us in creation. In Romans 8:18-20 Paul says, "I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.  For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope."

Let's consider the possible worlds God could have created. He could have abstained from creating any world at all. He was eternally self-sufficient. He could have created a world without sentient beings. He could have created intelligent beings who could not choose to reject Him. But in none of these worlds would we have the choice to love him, the challenge of true devotion, the chance to obey in the face of temptation. And none of these options would give us the possibility of repentance, redemption, or the wonder of grace as we know it.

When Jesus commanded the stone to be removed from the tomb of Lazarus in John 11, Martha protested, "Lord, by this time he will stink."

I too stink. Our world stinks of sin and corruption. Jesus answered Martha and me, "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

That day they saw a pantomimed foretaste of what we hope for. Jesus is the resurrection and the life.

Romans 8 continues with verses 22-25.

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

Suppose two people were given an odious task. One is told, “At the end of one year you will be paid $10,000 and be sent on your way.” The other is told, “At the end of one year you will be rewarded with forty million dollars and be revered by the entire world for the rest of your life.”

Which one will be better able to endure? In a hard world you can have a great hope.

In his book 10 Philosophical Mistakes, Mortimer Adler posed this question. If you were asked in the middle of a ball game with your favorite team so far behind that they could never catch up, "Is this a good game?", what would you say?

But suppose your team comes back at the very end and to win against impossible odds. That would be a better game than you could have imagined while your team was behind.

We are hoping against sight and smell in the promise of the Sovereign God who created the heavens and the earth that we will see glory beyond anything anyone can imagine!

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BLESSED

We don't hear the word blessed much in these days although it is probably not in danger of dropping out of the English language. We need a word for what God alone can do in our lives. There is a sense in which every person and every creature on earth is blessed by God. He gives us food and drink and every breath of air we breathe. But we find the fullest expression of blessing laid out by Jesus in His declaration of blessedness in Luke 6 and Matthew 5. In Luke the blessings are set against woes.

These blessed statements clearly represent the values given by Jesus to be sought by His followers. They, however, are counterintuitive. They go against our innate tendencies and the world's definition value and success. Jesus begins in Luke 6:18 with "Blessed are the poor." Who thinks poverty is good? He concludes the Matthew 5 passage by saying, "You are blessed when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you on account of me."

There are at least three crucial perspectives of these beatitudes given us by Jesus. First, we are blessed in spite of these things. You may be poor in the world's goods, but you have become a child of the King! James 2:5 says God has chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom promised to those who love God.

But we are also blessed by these difficult things. God uses difficult and painful things to develop the character of His children. So James chapter 1 tells us to count it all Joy when we fall into all kinds of trials. These blessings are not merely external like the things the world values. There is a couplet in my book of poems from The Gospel of John[1] that reads.

"Then you will come to know and understand

All that you longed for, but you couldn’t be."

God uses difficulties not simply to give us things, but to make us into joyful people. He makes us meek rather than people who manipulate to get what we want. We become merciful rather than pointing out how life is not fair to us. And all the worldly desires are removed so by our pure hearts we come to see the face of God.

Finally, we are blessed eternally by these values. The beatitudes must be seen in God's perspective of time. All the good things of this world will end in loss and sorrow and grief. But the good brought about in our lives by the Spirit of God is eternal.

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[1] https://goo.gl/0c2JxP