Confidence in Our Future Hope [A]

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If you would, turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 5, and you might also mark your Bibles at 1 John chapter 2. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and 1 John chapter 2. You know, a few weeks ago, Charlie and I had to make a quick run to Dallas, which is a relatively quick trip, or can be.

We had to go take care of some things. And where we were headed was actually outside Dallas in the northeast suburbs of Dallas. And the way she was, this is the first time we’d ever gone together, the way she was used to going, you take the interstate all the way there and go through Dallas.

And, you know, some things I enjoy about driving in Dallas, or sometimes I should say I enjoy driving in Dallas. It’s kind of like being in NASCAR without a corporate sponsorship. but if I’ve got somewhere I’m trying to get at a certain time I don’t want to deal with the fuss and so I get off the highway and go around the back way and she’s kind of she’s kind of gotten used to I think my back way driving I you know even going from Norman to Moore I don’t even I don’t normally take I-35 I take the back roads because I like taking back roads and exploring anyway so she’d never gone this way before.

And to compound the problems, there was construction on I-35. I think there was a wreck. Plus, there were people who were just not the brightest on the road that day.

And so we ended up a few towns before I would normally get off, getting off early from the highway and taking a back road to the back road that I normally take. And this being her first time going there with me. I know she was thinking, are we ever going to get there?

Do you know where you’re going? And the answer is yes, I know where I’m going. But I could see.

She never really questioned me on it, do you know what you’re doing? But I could see the wheels turning. And you could understand the thought process.

You’re with somebody, you’ve never taken this trip with them before. Do they know what they’re doing? Do they know where they’re going?

It took, okay, I’m not telling you this is a funny story about her where she’s the punchline. I’m telling you, it took an immense amount of trust for her to sit there and say, okay, he’s going to, I don’t know how we’re getting there. I don’t know what crazy stuff we’re going to end up in on the way.

And folks, it was raining so hard, I couldn’t even see the road. There were oil tankers driving, I guess, is that what they call the trucks that, yeah, is that what they’re called when they haul the oil around in the truck? Anyway, they were all around us, narrow roads.

I’m telling you, It took a lot of trust for her to be able to sit there and go, okay, I don’t know how we’re getting there. I don’t know what’s going to happen along the way, but I know he’s going to get me to where I need to go. I know that he’s going to get me where I need to be.

On that same trip, we decided to go a couple other places. A grocery store that we don’t have here. That’s kind of an odd tourist attraction, isn’t it?

We’re going to go to a certain grocery. It’s called Trader Joe’s, something her family in Hawaii has. Anyway, we went to do that and then tried to come home.

And I don’t know how familiar you all are with Dallas, but there’s a major expressway that just ends in the middle of downtown. And I’m thinking if I keep going on this expressway, I’ll be able to hit I-20 and I should be able to hit I-20 and come back around up I-35, and it’ll just slingshot us back up to Oklahoma. No such luck, because this expressway just ends in the middle of downtown Dallas.

And there is no way on earth to get from where you are to I-20. And you end up having to wind your way through downtown Dallas. And at that point, I learned what trust was when I’m having to hope that Siri on the iPhone.

I have a love-hate relationship with Siri. But hoping that Siri knows where she’s to. Some of these streets, five-street intersections and one-ways and two-ways and three-way streets.

And I don’t, you know what, I had to trust that as we’re angling through places I’ve never seen before, that Syria was going to get me to where I needed to be. I still have no idea how we got back to I-35, but we did. Now, my reason for telling you this is to bring you sort of a real-world application where we can think about sometimes it does take trust. Sometimes we need to be confident, even if we can’t see how it’s going to work out, we need to be confident that no matter how winding the route is, no matter how confusing or scary it may be at times, that we need to have confidence that the Lord is going to get us to where we need to be.

Today is the last installment in this series I’ve been teaching on confidence. And it’s confidence that we can have. Today I want to talk to you about confidence that we can have in the future hope that he’s promised us.

That no matter how winding and twisting the pathways of life are, God has made certain promises to his people about eternal life, about a relationship with him forever in heaven, that we have certain promises that we can cling to. And it’s sort of like this trip through Dallas for Charla and for me. Oh, I hope he knows where he’s going.

I hope Siri knows where she’s taken us. And we continue on down the winding, twisting roads, believing that even though we can’t see the pathway ahead of us, even though we can’t see clearly the route or the next three steps ahead, that knowing that the one we’re entrusting things to is going to get us to where they’ve promised to take us. Let me tell you, the Lord is a much better navigator than either I or Siri.

He has made promises of eternal life. He’s made promises of eternal life. He’s made promises of eternal reward.

And sometimes we can get so caught up in the things of this life that we start to, maybe we doubt sometimes. Maybe we don’t even go so far as to doubt. Maybe we just question.

Or maybe it’s just a matter of we lose sight of ever getting there, and we don’t even think about that because all we’re focused on is, I’m lost among these big tall buildings in downtown Dallas. I’m lost amid the struggles and trials of life, and we’re not even looking ahead to the future that he’s promised us. Today I want to look at two things written by two different apostles that address this very concept.

What do we do when the world throws everything it has at us? What do we do when we can’t see the road ahead? What do we do when we can’t make out what way God is going to lead us there?

Or we just even forget to look. I want to start with, I had it down here to start with 2 Corinthians, but I want to start with 1 John this morning. As I’ve said before, and I think I’ve taught out of 1 John already on this series of confidence, because 1 John is all about confidence.

It’s all about writing so that they would know and be assured. Go through some time, if you want to do this experiment, go through some time and count all the times in the book of 1 John that it uses the word know, K-N-O-W, or some variation of it. Know, new, knowing, knowledge.

It’s a staggering number. It’s all about writing to people who were lacking assurance and giving them the assurance that they needed. The people in John’s day that he was writing to, he was writing toward the end of the first century, He was the last of the apostles still living.

And it had been quite a number of years since Christ had risen from the dead and since he had ascended. And by now, there were people who were Christians who had not been witnesses to that. You know, in the early days, most of the people who were the first believers were people who were there in Jerusalem, saw Jesus’ ministry, saw his crucifixion, saw his resurrection, saw him taken up into heaven.

And they were witnesses to that. But eventually, as the message of the gospel spread, there became Christians like us who didn’t get to see those things with our very eyes, with our very own eyes. And in their day, some of the questions that arose, there was fertile ground for false teachers to come in who really confused and messed up the believers.

And some of these speculations and false teachings are familiar to us today. Some people taught in their day that the day of the Lord had already passed. Now, day of the Lord is sort of a catch-all phrase that’s used in the Bible.

Some people understand it to mean the rapture. Some people understand it to mean the second coming. Folks, I don’t know what order.

I have my opinions, and they’re based on the way I understand Scripture. But I’ll be honest with you and say I really am not completely 100% sure what order. everything’s going to take place in.

And I don’t think anybody is. I think we can have very strong beliefs on it. We can base it on scripture.

We can debate those things. But what we all need to agree on is that Jesus Christ is coming back. Now, there were some in their day who said, just as people say today, well, he’s already returned.

And if you’re thinking, well, I’ve never heard anybody teach that. There’s a whole school of thought out there that says, oh, all of the prophecies of Christ’s second coming were fulfilled in 70 AD. There were people who taught that Christ had already returned.

So what’s the question there to people in the 90s AD? We missed it. Did we miss it?

What happens to us next? They were worried, thinking they’d already missed the day of the Lord. What’s going to happen to us?

Have we been left behind? Some thought the day of the Lord had already passed. Others thought that his return was so close that they should abandon everything else and wait for it.

Read what Paul wrote to the believers in Thessalonica in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. That deals so much with that issue. There was some teaching, he’s returning any minute, or he’s returning on such and such day, so you need to sell everything you’ve got, and you need to just sit around and wait for it.

Folks, we’ve heard of that happening in just the last few years. I didn’t believe for a minute, I didn’t believe for a minute that the world was going to end on, was it May 21st, 2011? May 20th or 21st. I didn’t believe it for a minute when Harold Camping said it.

And yet there’s a part of me that remembers sitting on the couch that day thinking, okay, here we go. I guess we’ll see. One of us is going to be proved right by the end of the day.

There were people who bought into that, sold everything they had and gave it away. People who were financially ruined by that because they sold everything and gave it to the ministry of a man who said, Jesus is coming back this very day. Well, there were believers in that day who were taught, he’s coming back so quickly that you better sell off everything.

You better quit your job. You better throw everything else aside. Give your money away.

Hey, maybe give some of it to us. And there were people who were just not doing anything, just sitting waiting for Jesus to return. And meanwhile, being a drain on the resources of everybody else around them.

And there were others who taught that those who died before Jesus’ second coming They just missed out. There were those who said, yes, if we’re alive at his second coming, he’ll take us to be with him and we’ll get to be in heaven forever. But yeah, if they’ve already died, then they just miss out.

They just stop being, stop existing. Folks, there were all sorts of false teaching. And there are still people who believe that today, that it’s called soul sleep or annihilationism.

Fancy terms for the wrong idea that we just stop being when we die. Folks, all of these ideas and others were getting into the minds of people in the early churches, and they are still getting into the minds of believers today and leading people astray when it comes to whether or not God really is able to fulfill his promises to provide us an eternal hope with him in the future. Is God able to keep his promises or not?

Does he keep his promises or not? Those questions are central to all of this. And so John very pointedly responds to these allegations, responds to these false teachings, and said, no, there are some things that you need to know, some things you need to be confident about.

And so we turn to 1 John chapter 2, if you haven’t already, and starting in verse 25, he said, and this is the promise that he hath promised us, even eternal life. He’s reminding them after he’s already been talking about God’s track record of faithfulness. He said, this is a promise.

It’s not just a teaching, not just a principle, not just a speculation. He said, this is a promise from God. Folks, God keeps his promises.

That word promise should not be interpreted lightly. I’m very careful about using the word promise with my children. I have to be very careful about what I answer them, period, because if I tell Benjamin maybe, he will remember something weeks down on the calendar.

We were in academy three months ago. Sports, outdoors, that kind of thing. They had drones in there.

Okay, I’ve been trying to, we bought a couple remote control helicopters and things like that, trying to fly them. He enjoys those. They had drones in there for $65.

Okay, I thought that would be fun. To my knowledge, doesn’t have a camera or anything on it. He said, Daddy, can we get a flying robot?

I said, well, baby, when Daddy saves up some more money, then yeah, we can get you a flying robot. Hasn’t been mentioned since. And we were in the car the other day on the way to Chick-fil-A, and he asked me, have you saved up enough money for that flying robot yet?

Boy, that was three months ago. How do you remember that? So I have to be very careful with what I tell them, with what I answer.

And I have to be very careful with saying, I promise. Daddy, do you promise I can have candy when I get up from my nap? No, I don’t promise that.

because if you say promise folks it means promise and we need it when we make a promise we either need to be prepared to keep it or prepared to explain why we weren’t able to when and there’s nothing God isn’t able to do and so when God says promise you better believe he means promise and John says this is the promise that he has promised us eternal life how long is eternity I’m asking you that because I want you to think about it for a minute. When I stop and try to think about eternity, it gives me a headache eventually. Because you think about the longest period in the future that you can possibly imagine, and it’s still longer than that.

And it’s still longer than that. And eventually there’s got to be an end to it, and then there’s more. Eternity is forever.

But I still don’t think the word forever captures what eternity means. There is a life that God promises us that literally has no end whatsoever. Think about it as far out as you can, and there’s more.

You spend a lot of time trying to ponder that idea, and it will give you a headache. It will drive you crazy. And proof right there that God’s capacity to understand is different from ours.

Because God designed eternity, and I can’t even wrap my mind around the concept. So he says he’s promised us eternal life. So, hey, believers, you’re worried that you’re going to be left behind.

You’re worried you’ve already been left behind. You’re worried you’re going to die too soon. You’re worried that the timing’s not going to be right.

You’re worried about this, that, and the other. You’re worried about life here on earth. God has promised a life that never ends, period.

He says in verse 26, These things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you. That word seduce, they were seducing people into false ideas, into false teachings. hey come over here I’ve got new teaching for you I’ve got candy for you here in my van no do not do not go I don’t care what candy the false teachers on tv or on the radio and not that they all are but it’s a good number I don’t care what candy they offer you don’t get in their van if it doesn’t if it doesn’t line up with what God’s word has already said don’t go with them and he He said, I’ve written to you about those people who are trying to, this whole thing I’m writing is about these people who are trying to entice you with their false teachings.

He says in verse 27, But the anointing which you have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you. The anointing of God that they’d received, he said, abides with you. It hasn’t left you.

When God marked you out and set you aside as his own, that stayed with you. It hasn’t changed. God doesn’t mark you and seal you and say you’re mine for a while unless you miss the boat.

He says you’re mine, period. And ye need not that any man teach you. Okay, this is a dangerous verse for me to be talking about up here.

Guess you don’t need anybody to teach you, you can go home. No, that’s not what it’s saying. What it means is you don’t need anybody to teach you otherwise.

If somebody comes along with some newfangled doctrine that’s contrary to what you. . .

You don’t need somebody to come in and tell you new things. You need somebody who’s going to come along and equip you and encourage you to do the things that we already know God has taught us to do. You don’t need somebody to come in and bring you new novel doctrines.

I think I’ve told you before, I’m always skeptical whenever somebody says, I discovered something new in the Bible. Okay. It may be new to you, but it’s not new.

If you have some kind of new revelation from God, then we need to talk. If it’s something nobody else has seen. Hey, I’m excited if somebody says, I’ve discovered something that I’ve never seen before that’s in there.

Great. I’m talking about somebody who comes and sees something that nobody’s ever seen before in the Bible. Okay, red flags.

red flags all around should be worried about that so he says god’s anointing has not left you it still it still abides in you and you don’t need anybody to come teach you otherwise don’t go looking for novel new ideas but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie even as it had taught you you shall abide in him so he says remain with what you’ve been taught and remain with the one who revealed it. And now little children abide in him. Hear this.

He says, abide in him, which if you’re a believer, if you’re born again, you can’t do otherwise. Abide in him, live with, stay with him so that when he shall appear, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. You know what?

There were a lot of people who were teaching a lot of wrong ideas, who were leading a lot of God’s people astray, who were going to have lot to answer for at his appearing. There’s going to be a lot of cause for shame. You know what?

We all have things that we’re going to be ashamed of. We all have things that we’re ashamed of. I wish I’d lived differently.

I wish I’d done this differently. I wish I could go back and fix it and live up to what he wants. But folks, the Bible says, desire not many to be masters, meaning teachers, for theirs is the greater condemnation.

In other words, I and anybody else who stands before the people and says that they teach God’s word is responsible for what they teach and is going to be held accountable to God for what’s taught. We’re going to be held to a stricter standard for what we’ve taught. And there were going to be many in John’s day, just as in our day, who are undermining the faith of people by teaching them false doctrines, including, well, you’ve been left behind, it’s already happened, or you have to do this.

Any of these things that we’ve already talked about, that they were going to have a lot to be ashamed about and a lot to answer for. And John said, you stay with him, you abide in the Lord, you abide in what you’ve been taught, so that when he appears, you will have confidence and not be ashamed before him and his coming. If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him.

And this thought is thrown in there throughout John’s writing, that we can tell the good tree and the evil tree by the fruit they bear. You can tell what a plant is by the fruit it bears. I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody.

You don’t get peaches from an apple tree and vice versa. So he says, you know that if he is righteous, excuse me, if ye know that he is righteous, you know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him. He says, look at the lives of these false teachers.

They were coming in, They were subverting people’s faith, undermining their faith. They were doing things for monetary gain. They were, I don’t really feel the need to describe it too much because you can go turn on entire TV channels that are built on it today.

He says you’ll know them by their fruits, in other words. And if their fruit isn’t godly fruit, then you know it’s not godly teaching because they don’t work for and serve him. But his whole point of writing this was to remind them, you know what, you’ve been taught the right way.

You’ve been taught about the future hope that you have. You’ve been taught about the promises of God in eternal life. Don’t let anybody convince you otherwise.

And I would say the same thing to you this morning. If you ever find yourself in that position where you’re thinking, well, what if I get left behind? What if I, I walked in here last Sunday morning, and I guess we were here earlier than usual. I didn’t think so.

But there was nobody in the auditorium. I expected I’d at least see Dorothy or Lucille. There was nobody in the auditorium.

And I looked at Charla and jokingly said, well, maybe the rapture came and I got something really, really wrong. Because everybody’s cars were out front, but it was totally silent in here. You know what?

There are some people who worry about, I’m a believer, but what if I really did get left behind? Or what if all that’s already happened and his second coming’s already happened? Because that’s what I heard from the TV preacher.

Or what if I really am supposed to sell everything I have because he’s coming next Tuesday at 11 a. m. , just in time for lunch?

We can get so twisted up in these other ideas or even so twisted up in the cares and concerns of life that we forget to even think about his eternal promises at all. And we’re just focused on what we have and what we deal with here and now. Well, I would say the same thing.

If you’re in any of those circumstances, I would say the same thing to you. We know what he’s been promised or what he’s promised us. We know that he has promised eternal life to those who are born again by faith in Jesus Christ. We know that he’s promised an eternal reward in heaven.

We know that he’s promised that he would take us to be with him and no man could pluck us out of his hand. We know his promises. And I would submit to you, you don’t need anybody who’s going to teach you otherwise.

Stay with what you’ve been taught. Not because I said it. Folks, you’ve been taught these things long before I was ever born.

But stick with what you’ve been taught because it’s what the Bible says. If we know the promises of God are true, stay with those. We don’t need anybody to tell us otherwise.

Let’s turn to 2 Corinthians for just a moment. 2 Corinthians chapter 5. This is written by the Apostle Paul who was dealing with some of the same issues with the people in Corinth.

They were worried about what was going to happen to them at their death. I’m going to start in verse 1 of chapter 5. He says, For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

That word tabernacle a lot of times is, sometimes in the Bible, is used as a metaphor for the body. So in other words, we know that if this earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we mean this earthly body decays, and they do decay over time. They do, you know, we can’t run as fast as we used to, can’t breathe as well as we used to, all sorts of things.

And then eventually the body just stops working. I saw a documentary, a mini-documentary, it was about five minutes long, on YouTube a while back, and said, here’s an explanation of all the various ways to die. I thought, well, that sounds interesting.

So I clicked on it. Only interesting from the standpoint of how they can explain all of this in about five minutes. They explain there’s really only one way to die, and that’s when blood stops flowing to the brain.

That’s all there is. And any number of things can cause that. Excessive bleeding, heart attack, heart stops pumping the blood, you name it.

Blood stops reaching the brain, you’re gone. the body stops working. Eventually something happens where blood stops reaching the brain and that tabernacle begins to decay.

And so he says, if that earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, if it’s no more, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. This earthly body is eventually going to stop working, is eventually going to stop functioning. And folks, that’s a sobering thought when we start to realize it.

I remember just, it was like it was just a blink of an eye ago, being a kid and thinking I’m going to live forever. Life seems so long. You know what?

I turn 30 next month, which is not that old. But it starts making me think, okay, this is moving faster than I realized. And eventually, wow, eventually I’m not going to be here anymore.

It’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? This earthly body will decay. this earthly body will stop working.

And eventually it will stop working altogether. He said, but in that moment where the earthly body stops working, where the earthly body is no more, he says, we have a building made of God. When this earthly building comes crumbling down, we have a building from God, not made with human hands, that is eternal in the heavens.

Wow. An eternal building that God made. First of all, I have to hope, I have to hope that if God made it and it’s not marred by the effects of human sin here on earth, my building up there is going to look a lot better than my building down here.

I have to believe that. But folks, that phrase, eternal in the heavens, tells us it never gets old. It never decays.

We never die a second time as believers who are given this building, this new body eternal in the heavens. He says, for in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven. There’s a longing.

There’s an expectation of that. The longer we go on in this earth, the more we should grow in that expectation, in that longing to be with him and partake of this earthly, excuse me, this heavenly habitation. I remember also as a child thinking, I don’t want to die.

I’m not ready to go to heaven yet. There’s still so much fun to be had here on earth. And I’m still a little bit in that mindset.

I’ve still got things to do. You know what? The older I get, with each passing year, I start to understand what people were talking about over the years when I’ve heard older believers say, I’m just ready to go on to be with the Lord.

Because I remember being 10, 15, even 20 years old and thinking, what, are you just ready to give up? Why would you? But as I’ve experienced separation from loved ones, either moving apart to serve God in different areas, or some being separated by eternity, going on to be with the Lord and the rest of us left here, the more I experience that separation, the more I realize I don’t want to do that anymore.

I long for the time when we’re all just together in the Lord’s presence. I’m still not ready at this moment to go like I want to go now. But I understand with each passing year more and more why people say, I’m just ready to go be with the Lord.

And as life gets harder, and as the body winds down, it’s only natural that we would think, I want something better. And so he says, we’ve grown earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with this house which is from heaven. And I have heard people, some of you may have even said this, but I have heard people say, you know what, I’m just ready to put this behind me and have him call me home.

If so, that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. Now that’s just saying, there’s no point where we’re without a habitation here. Now why would that be important?

Because there were some people in their day who were teaching, well, you die and you just go in the ground and you’ve stopped existing. If you die before the second coming. and Paul says that’s ridiculous you step out of one habitation and directly into the next you step out of the earthly body and immediately into the heavenly body there’s no point where to use his word that we are found naked where the spirit is without a body he says for we that are in this tabernacle do grow in being burdened that we would be unclothed but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up in life and that goes back to that thought again of growing in the longing to step out of the earthly body and into the heavenly one and be there with God.

Verse five says, now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God. You know what? God designed us for that.

God designed us to live here on earth, but not to just stop existing. He designed us so that when we step out of time and space that we are with him. God designed our spirit to be eternal. He that wrought us for the selfsame thing, who made us for the same reason, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.

Now, I’ve talked about this already in this series, but that earnest of the Spirit is a down payment. It’s a down payment to prove His seriousness in the transaction. You buy a house.

Evidently, they’re getting away from this, but when I first, well, both times I’ve bought a house at this point. You put down earnest money, $500, $1,000, whatever. it proves to the buyer that you’re serious about going through with the transaction.

Because if you walk away, if you break the contract, you lose that money and have nothing to show for it. And I like my $500, so I’m not going to do that. It proves that I’m serious.

God has given us the Holy Spirit. The God who designed us for not only this life, but also designed us for eternity with Him, has given us the Holy Spirit as a down payment to prove to us that he is serious about fulfilling the promises that he made. He’s given us the earnest of the Spirit.

Therefore, we are alway