A Hope that Won’t Disappoint

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We’re going to continue our discussion of hope and what the Bible says about hope. And one of the things that I’ve been sharing with you up to this point is about how when the Bible talks about hope, it’s not talking about putting our hope in our circumstances. Because as soon as we do that, and as soon as our circumstances go wrong, then those hopes are dashed.

And one of the stories that I think best illustrates this, that comes to mind when I think about just every circumstance that somebody can grasp onto, grasping at straws, looking for hope, is it comes from a story of a submarine wreck that happened about 20 years ago in Russia. There’s a submarine called the Kursk, and I’ve read and watched several things about this submarine, And admittedly, there’s some conflicting information out there because the Russian government’s not known for its transparency about things. Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to share information that might paint Russia in a negative light.

And so we have to piece together the story as best we can. But this submarine was out in the Arctic Ocean as part of war games. They were rehearsing.

This was after the Cold War, but they were still rehearsing for if they went to war against America or Great Britain. And there was a whole fleet out there. Tons of ships, tons of submarines.

And suddenly, some of the ships began to detect an underwater explosion. And it was an explosion aboard the Kursk, which was this submarine that was not too deep, But I guess if you’re underwater and there’s an explosion and you’re not at the surface, any amount is too much. The ships detected this explosion.

And the best hope for the Kursk early on and for the men that were trapped on board was that somebody would realize that they were in trouble and come to their rescue. But that hope in the circumstance of somebody coming quickly for a rescue was complicated by the fact that everybody else thought it was part of the war games. And so nobody immediately said, we’re going to go looking for this crew.

Well, that’s bad enough, but then there’s some hope that maybe we can hold out a little longer until they recognize that we’re in trouble. And then there was a second explosion. And so you have a big portion of the crew being killed in these two explosions.

Some of them managed to get to the back of the submarine, and they were able to hide out there. But they weren’t able to send up the emergency buoy. Apparently there’s something that’s attached to the submarine that they can send up as a distress signal to let people know.

And I think because of the two explosions, they’re back there trying to deploy this emergency buoy because their hope is somebody will realize that we need help, somebody will get to us. Because of the explosion, it may have been a maintenance issue, depending on what you read, they weren’t able to deploy this. So they weren’t able to send up a rescue signal to the surface to let anybody know that they were in trouble.

Now, eventually, they remembered that there are escape capsules located on the submarine. The problem is that one of the escape capsules had been destroyed in the explosions, in the first explosion, and the second escape capsule was inaccessible. It would still work, but they couldn’t get to it because of the parts of the submarine that had been damaged.

So they’ve got this hope that if we could just get to the rescue capsule, then everything’s going to be fine. But they couldn’t get to it. When the fleet realized that there was something wrong with the Kursk and they sent another submarine down, I’m not a submariner, I don’t know all the terminology, but they sent this rescue craft down to check on it and see what they could do, things didn’t go well either.

There was hope that we could get there and we could rescue them. The Russian Navy put down this craft to go check it out and they had to pull it right back up because as they were lowering this rescue craft, It collided with the Kursk and its propeller, and it damaged some of the steering and functions of that craft, and they had to pull it back up, and it was quite a while before they could get anything else in the water. There was the hope that maybe we could contact the British, because they’re nearby.

We know they’ve got the capability for submarine rescues. Maybe we can get the British to come help us. There was that hope.

until the higher-ups in the Russian government said, are you crazy? We’re 10 years out of the Cold War. We’re not letting the West know we can’t handle this.

One by one, all of these things that the people in the submarine clung to and that the people on the surface clung to for there to be any kind of rescue. I mean, it’s almost like you couldn’t plan it to happen where every possible option could go wrong any better than it. Does that make sense outside my head?

If you were planning something where every hope would go awry, you couldn’t plan it any better. And I’m sad to say that those men, everybody on board the ship ended up dying. Now, depending on the reports, they were alive for anywhere from several hours to a few days until the oxygen ran out on the ship and every option for their rescue ran out.

Everything that they put their hope in, that if this circumstance just works out this way, then everything’s going to be fine. And those circumstances never for them worked out that way. Now we run into circumstances like that, not anything as dire, hopefully, as the men on the Kursk, but we run into situations all the time where that’s our idea of hope.

We think, oh, I hope if my circumstances just turn out this way, then everything will be fine. If I go to the doctor and my test would just say this, then it’ll be fine. If this bill just doesn’t come due at this particular time, then everything’s going to be fine.

If this person in my life would just act right, then everything’s going to be fine. And we hang our hope on those circumstances that we’re going to be fine if something just turns out this way. And I don’t know about you, but for me it always feels like immediately the circumstance turns out the opposite direction.

We end up disappointed so many times and our hopes dashed because we are putting our hopes in our circumstances and they don’t always turn out the way we want them to. Oftentimes our hopes are dashed when they’re put in our circumstances. And yet the Bible talks about hope as a certain thing, as something we can be sure about, something we can expect, and so we’ve got to change our way of thinking about where our hope comes from and I feel sometimes in preparation for these messages that I may repeat myself on some things that I’ve talked about previous weeks and I told christy this week I used to feel bad about that and then I realized it’s because god’s word repeats itself because I need to be told things more than once just like my children right god has to god sometimes has to tell me several times to get it to sink in so if I If I’m repeating myself, there’s a reason for that.

But we’ve got to change the way we think about hope and where it comes from. And God’s Word describes a type of hope and a basis for hope that will never let us down. This morning we’re going to be in Romans chapter 5.

Romans chapter 5. We’re going to look at what Paul says about this hope that won’t disappoint us. Romans chapter 5.

If you turn in your Bibles there, if you’re using a device, there’s a link in our bulletin that’ll get you right there, or it’s on our screen. But if you’d stand with me, if you’re able to without too much trouble, we’ll read together from God’s Word. Romans chapter 5, starting in verse 1, and we’re going to look at the first five verses of the chapter this morning.

It says, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance character, and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

And you may be seated. Now when Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome, he was writing to them about hope, among other things. He’s writing about justification.

He’s writing about peace with God. He’s writing about hope. He’s writing about all of these things that we have.

And he’s writing to them to encourage them and reassure them because of the struggles that they were about to endure. Now, they were about to endure times of severe persecution that we just don’t see. Now, we see trouble, but they saw trouble with a capital T.

They saw persecution. They ran the risk of being martyred for their faith any given day. And so they, perhaps even more than we do, they needed a hope that wouldn’t disappoint.

Now, the good thing for us, though, is that we have the same hope, even though our circumstances aren’t necessarily as dire, which is not to minimize anything that anybody in here is going through, because it doesn’t matter how big the storm is or how little the storm is. When we are in the middle of the storm and look around us and all we can see is the storm, it seems pretty big. We have access to the same hope that they had.

And so as he talks about the hope that we have, we need to understand what is our hope. And our hope is in the fact that God has made significant promises to us. All throughout this series, I’ve been tying for you the idea of hope to the idea of the promises of God.

Hope is not, I wish this could happen. Hope is not, I believe God can do what I want. Hope is the certainty that God will do what He said.

And so our hope has to be tied to the promises of God. Now, God has made a number of promises to us, some of which are not mentioned in this passage, but there are a few that are mentioned here that we’re going to look at this morning. And a lot of these deal with our spiritual transformation and the change that He makes in us both in this life and in eternity to come.

These are things that not only we can look forward to the ultimate fulfillment someday, but we can begin to get a glimpse of now and know that it’s true. He talks about us being able to have a clean slate with God. He talks about things being able to be right between us and Him.

He says in verse 1 that we are justified by faith. All of our sins are forgiven. Justification is a big churchy word that we need to explain sometimes.

Justification just means a clean slate. It means God has wiped the slate clean. It’s like it never happened.

And God is willing just to move on. It’s been forgiven. It’s under the blood.

And He’s not going to hold it against us any longer. I had a conversation with one of my children this morning. And I won’t say who, but I had a conversation with one of my children this morning about some misbehavior yesterday.

And it was very calm today. It wasn’t calm yesterday. That happens.

Sometimes you’ve got to shock the system a little bit to get them to calm down. What is it I talked about a couple of weeks ago on a Wednesday night? You’ve got to stop the madman at some point.

This morning I came back and said, I’d rather discuss things logically and rationally. And now that everybody’s calm, we can do that. And we discussed the behavior.

We discussed what should have happened, what needs to happen going forward. And I noticed in the discussion that my child was very contrite, was very kind of brokenhearted about what we were discussing. I said, look, am I giving you any more consequences?

Do I sound mad at you? Although sometimes it’s hard to tell. So I’m usually pretty calm.

Do I sound like I’m mad at you? Do I look like I’m mad at you? I’m not.

There are no further consequences. We’re just talking. And at the end, I said, it’s done.

It’s over with. I’m not holding this against you any longer. We’ve dealt with it.

And that’s what God does with us in justification. It’s not as though God forgets that we sinned. Now, the Bible does say God chooses to remember no more, which is different from God just forgetting.

God has made the deliberate choice not to hold it against us. That’s what justification is. God hasn’t forgotten that we’re sinful.

But God has chosen no longer to hold it against us. So as far as God is concerned, we have a clean slate. And so many times because of who we are and the things that we’ve done and the attitudes that we see in ourselves, we walk around carrying this tremendous guilt even as believers.

And we think, yes, I’ve trusted Him to save me. I believe my sins are forgiven, and yet I walk around like I can’t forgive myself or like God shouldn’t forgive me. We carry around this guilt when God is looking at us saying, because of what Jesus did, it’s done.

It’s over. We’re moving forward. And He no longer holds it against us as believers in Jesus Christ. And so when He says we’ve been justified by faith, because we believe that Jesus Christ suffered, bled, and died in our place to pay for our sins, and because we believe that Jesus Christ rose again to prove it and to give us hope, Because we have that faith in Him, God has justified us.

It means He has cleaned the slate. He’s choosing to no longer hold our sin against us and to move forward instead. And that’s not just something we wish could happen.

It’s not just something we hope could happen, like maybe it will, maybe it won’t. It’s a promise of God that we can hold on to and say our slate is clean. We are justified.

And we are able to be right with Him. We don’t have to carry that guilt around anymore. You want to talk about hope.

Talk about the burden of guilt that we carry around for years and years and suddenly being relieved of that burden. And that’s what He promises us. And not just someday.

He says here, having been justified, it’s something that has already taken place. So God’s promised that. He’s promised reconciliation.

It says we have peace with God. When it says the slate is clean, it’s not just we’re meeting on neutral ground now. You know, there are people that sometimes they’ve done something wrong to you and you have to work at it to forgive them.

You finally get to that place where you’ve forgiven them, but you still don’t want to be around them. Anybody ever feel that way? It can’t just be me, right?

Okay, I’ve forgiven you. I’m not going to hold it against you what happened in the past. We’re okay. I’ll cry at your funeral, but I don’t want to go have lunch with you kind of thing.

God’s not looking at us that way as believers in Jesus and saying, I’ve forgiven you, but you stay over there. He says we have peace with God. We’ve been reconciled to Him.

We have been brought into His family as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ. Because there’s really not neutral ground with God. The Bible talks about how friendship with the world, that means the love of our sin, is enmity with God. Enmity means to be an enemy of.

In our sin, we have made ourselves God’s enemies. And God doesn’t just wipe the slate clean and say, okay, now we’re good, but you stay over there. God takes us from being enemies to being His sons and daughters.

We are reconciled to Him. We are at peace with God. Anybody who’s ever been married knows there’s a difference between not fighting and being at peace.

Sometimes you get to that point where you’ve fought. Now, this has never happened to us, right? Where you’ve fought and you’re just over the argument, but it doesn’t mean you’re good anymore.

I mean, it doesn’t mean you’re good at the moment yet. There has to come that moment of reconciliation. It’s not just that we are no longer God’s enemies.

We are reconciled with Him and we are at peace. That’s not something you have to hope for someday. That’s something he says we are.

We have in the present tense right now today. We have peace with God. There’s a welcome here.

He says in which we stand. He talks about this in verse 2. Access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

It’s not just kind of like standing around. You know, we were killing time yesterday waiting for the parade to start. Hours and hours later.

I was just kind of standing around. I was leaned up against the hay. That’s why my voice feels funny today, hanging around with the hay.

Just kind of standing there, but I had no particular attachment to that spot. That’s not what the Bible describes as standing. One of the words that’s wrapped up in the meaning of this Greek word is a fortification.

It’s a place where you’ve settled. You belong there. And so it’s not just saying that we may make a foray into God’s grace and we may just wander in there and hang out for a little bit.

It’s talking about we belong there, we’ve been welcomed in, we set up shop right there in the middle of God’s grace. sometimes we feel distant from God but if you’re a believer that’s not what He intends for you. He has invited you into His grace not just to come and have a picnic and leave but to stay there.

So that idea of standing is the idea of standing firm in a particular spot God has promised that we have that kind of access to His grace that we get to come there and we get to stay there. And He’s promised eternal joy. He says this in verse 2 that we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

That we will one day experience the joy of being in His presence and in His glory. And some translations say that we share in this. I don’t completely understand how that works because you and I will never be God.

We will never share God’s nature. But in some way the Bible talks about us reigning with Jesus Christ as joint heirs. So what all this looks like, I don’t know for sure.

I just know if God’s going to be there, that’s where I want to be. That’s what it was for me as a child coming to Christ and being saved. They talked to us about hell.

They warned us about the consequences of sin. And yes, I was scared of hell. But the reason I was scared of hell was because I knew Jesus wasn’t there.

And I just remember as a five-year-old child thinking, if that’s where God’s going to be, that’s where I want to be. And so we are told as believers that we have this hope, this expectation of joy in the glory of God. That we’ll get to be with Him and in His presence.

And that’s what’s going to make it heaven. We’ll enjoy the glory of His presence for all eternity. God has promised these things.

That’s where our hope comes from. God has promised these things, and God has also provided them. Because verses 1 and 2 also teach that our hope has been freely given to us by God.

It’s not just something He promised. I talked about this a little bit last week. It’s not just something that He promised the way we will sometimes promise.

My kids will ask me a question when I’m halfway listening. They’ve gotten really good at that. And I’ll say, uh-huh.

And they’ll run off. Wait, wait, what did I just say yes to? God doesn’t do that.

God doesn’t say, yeah, yeah, sure. We’ll go get ice cream later and I’ll buy you a pony. No, no, God knows what He’s saying.

He knows what He’s promising. And so when He’s promised us something, we can take it to the bank. Because He’s already done all that was necessary for us to have the things that He’s promised.

He tells us in verses 1 and 2 that all of this comes through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace. Where did we get it? It’s not something we have to work for.

It’s not something we earn. It’s not something that if we will just fulfill these criteria that He’ll give it to us. It’s something that has already been provided, has already been paid for through Jesus Christ. He says we have access into this grace.

We get this if we understand what these words mean. And sometimes it doesn’t hurt us to go back to basics and recover what the churchy words mean. Grace is simply the kindness of God that we don’t deserve.

And it can be something as simple as I had a good day, in spite of what I deserved, God took care of me anyway, all the way up to the ultimate expression of grace that Jesus Christ suffered, died, and died to pay for my sins when I didn’t deserve it. As Paul wrote later in Romans, when we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Grace is just the gifts and kindness of God that we don’t deserve.

We have access into this grace. It’s been provided through Jesus Christ. It was paid for when He sacrificed Himself for us. And we receive this gift by faith, it says, or through faith, by putting our trust entirely in Jesus Christ. Faith, and when we talk about believing in Jesus Christ, it’s not simply agreeing in our minds to a set of ideas.

Because we can believe that Jesus is who He said He was, and we can believe Jesus did what He said He would do without trusting Him. The Bible says even the demons believe and tremble. As we’ve been studying through Mark on Sunday nights, we’ve seen a couple times already how the demons cried out at Jesus, wanting Him to get away, and called Him the Son of God.

They knew and they believed it didn’t mean they trusted in Jesus Christ. Faith is realizing that Jesus Christ is everything He claimed to be, that He is the Son of God, that He is God the Son, and believing that He did what He said, that He died for our sins and rose again to prove it. But faith is also putting our trust entirely in that. And saying, I don’t have a plan B for how I’m going to get to heaven.

I’m not afraid here of putting all my eggs in one basket, of putting them in the Jesus basket. I don’t have a plan B of saying, well, just in case Jesus can’t do it, I’m also working really hard. I’m doing my religious rituals.

I’m going to church because I think that’s going to get me into heaven. Now, those are good things. You should come to church.

I’m glad you’re here this morning, but it’s not going to get you to heaven. There’s one plan. We don’t have a backup plan.

We don’t have an insurance policy. We are betting eternity. And that’s probably not the right terminology because there’s good reason to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

But for lack of a better analogy, We are taking all of our money. I’ve never gambled, but I’ve seen it on TV. We’re taking all of our chips and pushing them into this spot, and we are betting our entire eternity, the whole thing, on Jesus Christ and Him alone.

That’s faith. The belief, the conviction that we don’t need to put our trust anywhere else. And because of that, we have access to all of these things that He has promised through His grace.

We don’t deserve and cannot earn salvation. We do not deserve and cannot earn peace with God, reconciliation, a clean slate. None of that by being good enough.

Jesus Christ purchased it for us at a price we could not afford. And He offers it to us if we will simply believe and put our trust entirely in Him. We have access to this grace through our Lord Jesus.

Because our hope depends on Jesus Christ and what He’s done, because it depends on Jesus Christ who never changes, Our hope is not diminished. Our hope that it describes here is not diminished just because life’s circumstances change. See, this is where we come back to the circumstances.

If we put our hope in our circumstances and say, well, I hope life will get better if only this will happen, or if only this doesn’t happen, then when that happens or doesn’t happen in opposition to what we hoped for, where is our hope then? Instead, if our hope is in Jesus Christ, then we know that even if this doesn’t work out or this doesn’t work out doesn’t work out, that my hope really isn’t affected because my hope is over here in Jesus Christ in someone who does not, has not, and cannot change, who is the same as he’s always been, and who he’s always been as a promise-keeping God. Now what about if times are really, really hard?

You may think to yourself, sure, I know that that sounds good for when times are great, but what about when times are really, really hard? Well, I’ve been through what for me seemed like really, really hard times. And I can attest to you the only reason I got through them is because of the hope that I had in Jesus Christ. In some of those circumstances, there was the thought that, you know, things will just be great if it turns out this way.

And then it almost always did the opposite. If it hadn’t been for the hope in Jesus Christ that doesn’t change, probably wouldn’t have made it through those circumstances. But what he describes here in verses 3 through 5 is a hope that is strengthened in times of trouble.

We think of our hopes being dashed and disappointed when there’s times of but the hope we have in Jesus Christ only grows stronger when times of trouble come about. He says this hope is so strong that we can rejoice even in times of trouble. He says that in verse 3, we also glory in tribulations.

We rejoice when we suffer. Writing to the Romans, he’s talking about we rejoice even when we are persecuted for the cause of Christ. Why? How is that possible?

What kind of crazy person rejoices in suffering? Well, he explains why in verses 3 through 5. He says in verse 3, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance.

The suffering that they were about to go through and the suffering that we go through, it strengthens our faith and our endurance. As we make it through this trial and we are forced to rely on God, we are forced to rely on our hope in Jesus Christ, because that’s all we have left in those times. That faith is like a muscle and the more we work it, the more it gets strengthened.

It’s easy to have faith when things are good. But when things are hard, our faith gets exercised, and it gets stronger on the other side of those troubles. So knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, it makes us more able to endure greater things, to endure the next thing that comes along.

And he says in verse 4, and perseverance character. So with each test that our faith endures, we accumulate this body of experience that reminds us of the faithfulness of God and draws us closer to Him. On Wednesday nights, as we’ve been going story by story through the Bible, I’ve pointed out that what people will do a lot of times in the Old Testament is they will make lists for themselves and for others around them in the nation of Israel of all that God has done before.

We see Moses do it. We see Joshua do it. We see Nehemiah do it.

There are others that when they came to times of difficulty and they weren’t sure what they were going to do, they would stop and make a list and they would talk about He’s the God who did such and such with Abraham and fulfilled His promises. He’s the God who led us out of Egypt. He’s the God who parted the Red Sea.

He’s the God who brought us into the promised land. He’s the God that took care of our fathers under the yoke of the Philistines. And they would make a list of everything that God has done.

Well, each time we go through a time of suffering and our faith gets strengthened, it adds to the list that we get to make in our own lives of what God’s done. And I can tell you from personal experience, as I’ve had to deal with more and more difficult trials, the good thing is behind me, I’ve had a longer and longer list to fall back on. And bring myself to that moment of calm and say, wait a minute, here I am stressing about what’s going to happen, worrying about the future, because I’m facing this difficulty, and yet I can look back and see how God’s done this, God’s done this, God’s taken care of this, God’s dealt with this situation, and on and on and on.

And if God has done all of this, why do I doubt for a second that God can handle this now? So it strengthens my faith and it strengthens my hope. He says in verse 5, and character, hope.

As we’re drawn closer to God, as we begin to know Him more, and our hearts are pulled closer to His, we become more like Jesus Christ and our hope increases. It becomes easier and it becomes more natural to us to hope in Him. So they were looking at persecution.

If they could pull this off in persecution, folks, you’ve got to believe that we can pull this off today as believers, because our problems, while they’re serious and they’re real to us, they’re not usually life and death the way that theirs were. This stuff, what it’s talking about here, can be applied to any situation in which we suffer or have trouble. If our focus of our hope is on our circumstances, we are going to be disappointed.

Maybe not every time. I was going to say you may get lucky from time to time, but you may get providentially blessed, as we learned in Sunday school a few weeks ago. And from time to time, your circumstances may turn out the way you want them to, but what about the next time?

If we put our hope in our circumstances, eventually we are going to be disappointed, and it’s going to happen frequently. But if our hope is in the Lord and His promises, it’s a hope that’s never going to be disappointed. It says in verse 5, now hope, the kind of hope he’s describing here, does not disappoint.

That’s not me saying it. That’s not me just trying to give you a little pep rally and rah-rah and feel better leaving out of here. God’s Word says that.

The Apostle Paul, who suffered tremendously, wrote this to the church at Rome who suffered tremendously and says the hope we have does not disappoint because the object of our hope can never be taken away. The prospect of better circumstances can be taken away, but Jesus and who he is and what he can do can never be taken away. He says in verse 5, the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

See, God’s love for us in Jesus Christ is unconditional. It’s been poured out abundantly. The gift of the Holy Spirit is something that we have that’s irrevocable or irrevocable, depending on how you want it. He doesn’t take it back.

It’s a gift that we’ve been given that is there with