Hope in the Lord

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This morning, I want to start talking to you over the next few weeks about the about the subject of hope. Sometimes we need to go back to basic things. And hope is a really basic, important thing for us as believers.

One of the saddest things to deal with is when somebody has lost hope. You know, in ministry, I’ve walked with people through a myriad of situations, some of them good, some of them bad. but the worst of the bad situations are when the bad situations have been compounded by the fact that somebody’s lost hope.

And I think part of that, part of that comes about because we look for hope in the wrong places. We will look for hope in our bank account. I’m guilty of that one.

Not that I’m a rich man, but life just seems better when the checking account is over a certain amount. And if I go do the checkbook and it’s under a certain amount, Charlotte can tell you she’s had to talk me off the ledge a time or two. But you know as well as I do that just because you’ve got a little extra money in your account and you’re feeling pretty secure about the world, it doesn’t mean that something can’t happen and that money can be gone.

Sometimes we put our hope in, well, at least I’m healthy. At least I feel good. But what happens when the doctor comes in with news you don’t want to hear?

Is that the death of all the hope that we have? It doesn’t have to be. We put our hope in our circumstances.

People put their hope in the government. That’s going to work out really well. The government does everything really well, don’t they?

They put their hope in politicians. I’ve been involved in politics long enough. I know that’s not a good idea.

I’ve been in some of these watch parties. We were talking this week about the anniversary of our second date. Our second date was at a campaign watch party.

I told you she was a good sport, right? It was a campaign watch party. And I’ve been at several of these.

And depending on the way it goes, people react like all their worries are over for the rest of time. And I’m looking at these people celebrating going, I know I’m still going to have bills to pay tomorrow. When I walk out of here, my transmission is still going to be making that noise.

It’s not like all of our problems are solved because our hope is in this person who got elected. Or heaven forbid, the world is ending because the person we didn’t want, because the person we wanted didn’t get elected. I’m pretty sure the sun’s still going to come up tomorrow.

I mean, we’ve got a 50-50 shot of that. But we put our hope in all sorts of things. We put our hope in our job.

We put our hope in relationships. We put our hope in our plans for our kids, our finances, our health, all of it. And what we’re doing is looking for hope in all the wrong places.

I was in a store this week and heard that Johnny Lee song, looking for love in all the wrong places, and I thought that’s what we do with hope. We go looking for hope in all the wrong places. And it’s no surprise then that we’re disappointed.

And Israel had a lot of options about where they could put their hope. At various times, Israel may have been the strongest military power in the area. They were able to whoop up on the Philistines from time to time.

At times, Israel was prosperous. The Old Testament talks about them putting their trust in their military. Talks about them putting their hope in their prosperity and this and that.

But Israel had to be reminded all the time that even though they had all these options of where they could look to for hope, there was only one place for Israel to find real hope. And that’s where we’re going to start this morning. As we spend a few weeks talking about hope and what it is and where it comes from and where we find it, we’re going to start with what the Lord said to the Israelites in Psalm 130.

If you would turn there with me, please, in your Bibles. If you’re using a device, there’s a link in your bulletin to help you find that. it’ll be on your screen if you don’t have either of those options.

But if you would stand with me once you’ve found it, as we read from God’s Word together, we’re going to look at, somehow I ended up in the book of Micah. I don’t know how that happened. Psalm 130, and we’re going to look at the whole chapter this morning.

Never fear, it’s only eight verses. Starting in verse 1, it says, Out of the depths I have cried to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If you, Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared.

I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in His word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.

Yes, more than those who watch for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him there is abundant redemption.

and He shall redeem Israel from all His iniquities. You may be seated. And where it says there at the end, from all His iniquities, it means Israel’s iniquities, not the Lord’s, because He doesn’t have any.

But this psalm is one of several in the book called the Psalm of Ascents. And some people have said, well, people would sing this song as they were marching up to Jerusalem. And some people have said, no, they’d march it as they were going up to the temple, as they were either ascending up the mountains to Jerusalem to go to the temple or up the temple.

I really don’t care. It’s a song that they would sing as they were preparing to go to worship. It’s a song that they would sing as a reminder as they’re going into worship God of just how great He is.

And throughout this psalm, it deals with the concept of hope. And I think we need to understand what hope is because of, sometimes the flippant way we use that word. Well, I hope I catch the green light as I’m trying to turn from Fort Sill onto Cash Road, make that left turn.

I hope that, but it never happens. I have no reason to hope that’s going to happen. I know I’m going to sit there for eight minutes and wait for that light to change.

All right? I hope this happens. We use that.

We use that word all the time. I’m guilty of it. You’re probably guilty of it.

We use that in situations where we’re just kind of wishing. We have downgraded the concept of hope to little more than wishful thinking. Where when the Bible uses the word hope, it’s describing something that we have assurance of.

It’s something that has been promised to us, something that we are counting on, something that is money in the bank. It’s just not in our hands yet. When the Bible speaks of hope, it’s not the wishful thinking.

We need to understand this. It’s not the wishful thinking way that we use this. That God may or may not do something.

I wish God would do this, but I have no reason to think that He will. When the Bible uses the term hope, it’s saying we expect God to do this because it’s what He said. By the way, that doesn’t mean we expect God to do just whatever we want, right?

This is not a name it, claim it message. God, I hope my truck is 20 years newer when I get out there, so it’ll quit making that transmission noise. No, we’re putting our confidence in what God has said, not just what we think He ought to do.

But when the Bible uses hope, there’s an expectation there. There’s an assurance. And we’re going to go through this a couple verses at a time and see these lessons that God was teaching Israel about the subject of hope, kind of as the basis for the rest of our study.

And we see in the first couple of verses here, verses 1 and 2, that we can find hope in the Lord regardless of our circumstances. As I’m speaking about hope this morning, there may be some of you sitting here or watching online that are saying, well, hope is well and good for some of them in there, but you don’t know what I’ve dealt with this last week. You don’t know the test results I’m waiting on.

You don’t know the financial bind I’m in. You don’t know what’s going on with my kid. And I don’t.

Unless you’ve told me, I don’t. But folks, there is a hope that transcends our circumstances. And there is no circumstance that we can find ourselves in that is so dire that God cannot burst into it and bring us hope.

When we start out in verse 1 here, it describes the way Israel cries out to the Lord in desperation from a seemingly hopeless situation. You notice when we read verse 1, it doesn’t say that Israel cried out to the Lord because things were just oh so good. We cried out to the Lord because things were wonderful and we’re walking on sunshine and we just know, we just hope that it can only get better.

No, what does he say there, the psalmist? He says, out of the depths, out of the depths I’ve cried to you in a deep hole. I’m trying to think of a situation where that would be a good thing.

Somebody’s going to come up to me after the service and say, well, if you’re in this situation, it’d be a good thing. Alright, you may have found the exception. But when the Bible talks about the depths, usually it’s talking about the depths of life’s problems. It could apply to King David, and I don’t know for sure who wrote this psalm.

It may have been David. It doesn’t say. But it could be talking about David’s situations, for example, where trying to serve the Lord, he still found himself having to run for his life because King Saul wanted to kill him.

Even though David had shown himself faithful time after time. Now, David had his moments where he was not a good man. But as far as King Saul was concerned, David was on the up and up.

He was honoring King Saul because he was honoring God. And yet, even in doing the right thing, David still found himself in a life or death situation multiple times. Could be in the depths of that situation.

It could be when Israel was in the depths of captivity. When pagan, barbarian, brutal nations would come in and take the Israelites captive back to their countries, Where the Israelites would have to leave their homes and their families and their familiar worship and their familiar food and their familiar language, everything that they knew and was comforting to them, and they’d be whisked away by these brutal people. And they had no place to cry out to.

They had no place for refuge except to turn to God. It could apply to any of these circumstances, but we know being in the depths is not a good place. But even when they were in the depths of something, whatever it was, there was no place where they could not trust God.

to hear their pleas and to pay attention to their heartfelt requests. That’s why the psalmist here says in verse 2, Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.

Supplication is a big word. It just means you’re asking for something. A little more than that, there’s a touch of begging involved in there too.

Somebody had a great need and was crying out to God to meet that need and saying, please hear my voice and let your ears be attentive. Pay attention here. We know if you’ve ever been married, you know there’s a difference between hearing and listening, right?

He’s asking God to do both. And it’s not saying, well, I wish God could hear me. There’s an expectation here.

There’s an assurance here that God’s going to hear him. Because there was nowhere else. There was nowhere that Israel could go where God could not hear them.

This echoes what David wrote elsewhere. In Psalm 139, for example, The psalm where it talks about us being fearfully and wonderfully made. There’s part of that psalm where David talks about not being able to escape the presence of God.

Wherever he goes, God is there. Up, down, all around, God is everywhere. He cannot escape from the presence of God.

And that’s true for Israel as well. There was no depth of need. There was no circumstance where God could not hear them.

This morning, if you’re a child of God, you need to understand that there is no depth to your circumstances where God cannot hear you. Now it doesn’t mean that He’s going to work it out exactly the way we think He ought to. Our hope is not in our circumstances, our hope is in Him.

And He will work out the circumstances the way He knows they need to be. But Israel routinely found itself in these dire circumstances, all kinds of trouble, positions that seemed hopeless. They found themselves in slavery in Egypt, they found themselves in famine, foreign occupation, all sorts of things, exile, but things were never so dark or so difficult that God couldn’t hear them And not only that, just like it alludes to here in verse 2, things were never so dark or difficult, but God was not eager to hear them.

It’s not as though they had to go chase God down. He was right there. They’re just saying, please pay attention to our request, knowing that He was going to.

And folks, though Psalm 130 was not written about us, it was not even written to us, it was written to and about Israel, the fact is that God has not changed. In all these thousands of years, God has not changed. and if Israel served a God who could hear them no matter what their circumstances were and if Israel served a God who was willing to hear them no matter what their circumstances were and was willing to answer then we serve a God who’s able to do those exact same things.

I don’t know what you may be facing today but there’s no place you can go that God can’t hear you. So we can find hope in the Lord regardless of our circumstances and we could the reason for that is because of who He is. We can find hope in the Lord because of who He is.

And we see this in verses 3 and 4. He says in verse 3, if you, Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand? Iniquities is one of the words the Bible uses for sin.

And this idea of marking iniquities is describing keeping track. He said, if you look at the Lord as being like the strict teacher that you had in school that you didn’t like, who just watched, waiting for you to mess up so she could keep track of every little thing you did wrong? Anybody else have that teacher?

Or was it just me? I know we have some teachers in the audience and none of you in the congregation, and none of you are that kind of teacher, I’m sure. But I had one of those, and I was too scared of my parents to get my name on that list, but there were kids, it was like she hovered over them waiting for them to do something wrong.

And she would keep track. And saying, if God is that way, that He’s going to keep track of every little iniquity and every little sin, then who could stand? Who could survive that kind of thing?

And what the psalmist is saying here is that we are all guilty. Now, by the way, God does notice our sins. And God will hold us accountable for those sins.

But here the psalmist is talking as a believer. Someone who in God’s covenant, it’s been said, if you’re repentant, if there is atonement, then I’m going to choose not to hold these sins against you. But the psalmist is saying that because we are all guilty, If God were the kind of God who was determined to hold every one of our sins against us the way we deserve, regardless of what happens, there would be no hope for any of us.

And folks, that is still true today. If God was not the kind of God who was willing to forgive, then you and I are all toast. If God were a different kind of God who was unwilling to forgive under any circumstances, and by the way, that would be His right. My kids will get mad at me for something.

When I’ve told them, if you do this, there’s going to be a consequence here. And then they do this, and they get the consequence, and they act mad at me. I say, you chose this.

Am I right or am I right? And the first time I said, am I right or am I right? That really confused them.

It’s not a trick question. There’s only one answer. All right?

I am right to impose this penalty on you. You chose this. When we mess up, when we sin, we don’t get to get mad at God for giving us the consequence that He warned us about and that He outlined for us as though it’s His fault.

If our sin is judged as He warned that it would be, He’s entirely in the right. We don’t get to get mad at Him about that. Sometimes we still do.

But if God chose not to forgive, He would be entirely justified. If I’m the one that sinned, that’s on me. And if He exercised that right to say, I’m holy and you’re big old sinners and I’m not going to forgive, if He exercised that right, we would be in a terrible mess.

I’m not going to ask you to raise your hand if you know you’d be in a terrible mess, but I’ll raise my hand and tell you I would be in a terrible mess. All right? It’s awfully good for us then.

It’s an awfully good thing for us then that God is the kind of God He is. And the psalmist spells out what kind of God that is in verse 4, that He’s a forgiving God. It says, but there is forgiveness with you.

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, if you were going to keep track of this no matter what, and by the way, bring it up all the time even after it’s supposedly forgiven and continue to hold it against us after it’s supposedly forgiven. If you were that kind of God, which of us could stand in your presence? And He says, but you are a forgiving God.

There is forgiveness with you. Now this doesn’t mean that God condones sin. It doesn’t mean He affirms it, that He approves of it, or that He overlooks our sin.

Don’t take this idea that God is a forgiving God to mean that God’s just okay with whatever we want to do. There are some churches that teach this. Just do what you want to do because God’s a God of love.

God is a God of love, but you’ve kind of missed part of who God is there. God is also holy. God’s also holy.

And it’s not that these are two opposite things that He has going on. They’re all part of the recipe of who He is, for lack of a better way to explain it. They all work together.

He is holy, and so He has an incredibly high standard, but also that’s combined with His love because He realizes that sin will hurt us. So all of it’s rolled in together. Don’t take this as saying, oh, God just excuses everything we want to do.

It means, though, that He is willing to offer forgiveness that we don’t deserve within His conditions. He gets to set up the parameters under which there’s forgiveness. And His conditions are not just, oh, do whatever you want and I’ll let you in.

His conditions for Israel were that you had to be part of the covenant that He made with Israel. His conditions today are still that you’ve got to be part of the covenant. That covenant’s a little different now.

Because whereas Israel was part of the covenant through their religious activities and through the sacrifices that were offered, we can be part of the covenant today because Jesus Christ was sacrificed to pay for our sins in full. And if we will believe in Him as our Savior, And we’ll come to Him in repentance and faith. Those sins are forgiven.

And I know the world likes to look at it and say, and I’ve told you this before, that it’s so harsh, it’s so narrow-minded to think that God would only make one way of salvation. But my answer to that is it’s one more way than what we deserved. He’s the one that sets up the conditions.

He didn’t owe us any way of salvation. He didn’t owe us any way into the covenant. But I’m thankful He is a God of forgiveness.

The psalmist says there is forgiveness with you. and when we understand who he is when we see all of these things mixed together his justice and his capacity to forgive we’re going to be awestruck by him and by who he is and folks I don’t care if you’re a new believer or if you’ve been walking with him for 30 years 40 years 60 years in some cases the more you get to know him the more you begin to understand him through his word as you begin to peel back those layers you’re going to be in awe over and over and over again That’s why he says here in verse 4, there is forgiveness with you that you may be feared. That word feared doesn’t necessarily mean we quake with terror, but there’s an amazement at who God is.

And ultimately, He offers us forgiveness and the hope that comes from being reconciled to Him. Part of the reason why Israel was in the depths is because they were always wandering away from Him. And Israel was in constant need of being reconciled with God.

The reason why we feel hopeless today ultimately is because we are estranged from God. We are separated from Him. And He offers us forgiveness and the hope that comes from being reconciled with Him because it’s in His nature to do so.

He doesn’t offer us forgiveness and reconciliation because we’re so wonderful. I think y’all are wonderful, but I’m also a sinner, so what do I know? Right?

By God’s standards, none of us are wonderful. None of us are being forgiven because we’re so wonderful. We’re being forgiven because He’s wonderful.

because it’s in His nature. Because there is forgiveness with Him. And there’s a hope.

It comes with realizing that this debt that we incurred, that we could never pay, this debt with our Creator, with the sovereign God and judge of the universe, this obstacle that we could never get past, that we could never overcome, that we could never repay. We had no way around what sin put in our path to be right with God. And so the God who created us for harmony with Him, we were just separated from Him and there was nothing we could do about it.

And that is at the root of all of our problems. And when that is removed, when that divide is bridged, when that obstacle is rolled out of the way and we are once again reconciled with the God who made us and we’re able to stand in His presence and we’re able to enjoy fellowship with Him, that’s the source of a hope that will transcend every circumstance in our lives. This hope is different from hope that anybody else offers. As I said earlier, your bank account can offer you hope until the next big catastrophe, until your water heater goes out and you have to pay hundreds of dollars.

Politicians can offer you hope until they get in there and you realize that they’re just the same people you voted out. Our health can offer us hope until the doctor comes in with bad news. But God offers a different kind of hope, peace with Him, that none of those things can take away.

God offers a different kind of hope. And the hope that only He offers, the hope that only He gives, is the kind of hope that we need most. In verse 5, the psalmist describes waiting on the Lord. And there’s a sense of eagerness for the Lord to show up and do what only He can do.

There’s a sense of expectation. He said, I wait for the Lord. My soul waits.

He says this over and over. He’s waiting on the Lord because of His truth and His promises and the hope that they bring. He says, in His word I do hope.

this hope in his word is the expectation that he’s going to do the things he promised he would do. Our hope is not that God might do what we want him to. Our hope is that God will do what he says he will do.

And that’s what the psalmist is waiting on here. And he describes how eagerly he waits for the Lord by comparing it to a night watchman. You know they would have in the old days before they had alarm systems and police forces, they would have night watchmen who would sit up and watch the city.

Make sure there weren’t thieves prowling around. Make sure invaders weren’t breaking in through the walls. They would watch.

He says in verse 6, My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning. And then for good measure shall we understand how serious He is. He says, yes, more than those who watch for the morning.

He says it twice. I don’t know if you’ve ever had to sit up all night. Some of you in the military did sentry duty.

You ever get to the end of a nighttime shift and you could not wait for the sun to come up so you could go to bed? gets exhausting waiting. I’ve never had to do sentry duty, but I’ve had to sit up with a sick child.

Spent a lot of nights up and down all night at the hospital with Jojo. And I tell you what, I prayed for morning when Mama would come and I could go home and get some rest in between the other kids screaming. These night watchmen, they would sit up and wait, but that’s hard.

Watching the city, trying to keep everybody safe all night long and fighting the sleep. And so you would be eager to see the morning come. And he said, I’m waiting for the Lord.

I am more eager to see the fulfillment of God’s promises than that night watchman is to see the morning. And God’s promises, what He promises us, which is reconciliation to Him, peace with Him that meets the needs of our soul, the deepest needs more than anything else ever could. You can have all the health and all the money and all the stuff and everything that the world puts their hope in.

You can have all of those things and still end up separated from God for eternity in the ultimate of all hopeless situations. But you can be poor and sick and oppressed here on earth and still have a hope that cannot be shaken because you know where you’re going to go and you know whose you are. You know who you belong to.

This hope is so different from what anybody else offers because it cannot be taken away. And ultimately what we need, what our souls long for is this hope from the Lord. Now, I’m not going to stand here this morning and try to minimize the circumstances you might find yourself in and tell you that Jesus is the immediate answer to every situation you face.

You don’t run to Jesus and immediately your bank account fills up. You don’t run to Jesus and suddenly your children are immediately well behaved and quiet and people’s exhibit A. You don’t run to Jesus and all of your earthly problems immediately become sorted out.

But what He does is gives us a hope that transcends those things. For us to have real hope that cannot be taken away requires trust in the Lord. That’s why the psalmist told Israel in verse 7, Israel, hope in the Lord.

He assured them that with God they would find mercy. They would find God’s mercy. That God would look on them with kindness and compassion.

He assured them that God would purchase them back. That’s what he’s talking about with redeeming. After they’ve wandered from Him.

If you’ve wandered from Him, hope is not that you’ll be able to be a better person. Hope is that God promises to take you back if you come to Him. He assures them that God is going to forgive their sins in verse 8.

As I’ve said over and over, all the stuff that the world puts their hope in, it can be taken away from you in an instant. Your money can be gone. Your health can be gone.

Your family, all of it can be gone. But the Lord gives us a hope that transcends all of those things. I’d love to sit down and visit with you one-on-one if I had the time to.

To talk about some of the circumstances I’ve been through. Things that I thought I will not survive the next 24 hours. And I can tell you the only thing that got me through those things, those times, those difficult days, was the fact that I had a hope in the Lord that could not be taken away.

And I know that many of you are in that same boat in this room. Many of you have been through worse things than I have. My reason for telling you that is because people tend to think, No, but when you’re a pastor, you’re so close to God, everything’s perfect, everything’s wonderful, you’re like this.

Listen, we walk with the Lord just like the rest of you. We have struggles and trials. I’m not telling you something I don’t believe or haven’t experienced in my own life.

Jesus didn’t eliminate all of my problems. Jesus gave me a hope that transcends those problems. Because ultimately, I can look at a situation, I can look at a circumstance, and no matter how dire it is, I know that He’s right there. I know that I can turn to Him. I know that I can trust Him.

I know that He’s going to work it out for my good and for His glory. And even if that doesn’t mean He works it out the way I think He’s going to, the worst case scenario is that He takes me to be with Him. And there’s that hope of eternal life in His presence that can never be taken away.

And folks, if you are a child of God this morning, we need the reminder from time to time that our hope is not in our stuff. It’s not in our circumstances. Our hope is in the surety of the assurance of the promises of God.

that when He says something, He will do it. When He says He has forgiven us, when He says He has redeemed us, when He says He has made a place for us, that what God says He will do. And just because we haven’t got it in our hand right now where we can touch it, taste it, see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, just because it’s not right here in our hands doesn’t make it any less sure because God always keeps His promises.

And if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, our hope is in the Lord because He is merciful. And the ultimate way that God showed His mercy, the ultimate way that people have found forgiveness with the Lord, was the fact that God the Son, Jesus Christ, came to earth as a man and lived a perfect sinless life so He didn’t have any sin of His own to deal with. But He took responsibility for my sin and for yours.

Because God can’t just ignore the sin or pretend it didn’t happen. God showed mercy by Jesus Christ taking responsibility for our sins. being nailed to the cross, suffering, bleeding, and dying in our place to pay for our sins.

Because He died for us and because He rose three days later, God is able to issue forgiveness. He’s able to forgive us. And once it’s forgiven, He’s not holding on to it and marking it down to bring up to us later.

He’s forgiven those sins and those iniquities so that we can be right with Him and so that we can have the promise that He gives of eternal life.