Confidence in Our Future Hope [B]

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If you don’t still have the spots marked in your Bibles, we are in 1 John 2 and 2 Corinthians 5. 1 John 2 and 2 Corinthians 5. And I started talking with you this morning about the idea of the future hope that we have in Jesus Christ. And sometimes the fear that we have as a result of people teaching things that are inaccurate, in some cases people teaching things that they know to be lies or should know to be lies, there were many in the first century who were led astray to believe that the day of the Lord had already come and passed.

There were some who were led to believe that it was so imminent, so close. And quite honestly, folks, it could be today. We don’t know.

No man knows the date or the hour. I certainly don’t. And neither does any other preacher.

We don’t know the date or the hour. But some were taught that it was so close that you, and maybe it’s a certain date, you need to just abandon everything, sell off everything, and just wait. And not only is that a problem because it’s not true, it’s a problem because what happens to the faith of somebody after that has passed?

Well, if you were wrong about Christ coming on a particular date, maybe you’re wrong about everything. Maybe all of this is wrong. Maybe he’s not coming back at all.

You could see where that could undermine somebody’s faith in everything just because somebody taught them wrong. Others were taught that, you know, if you died before the second coming, then you were just out of luck. And John and Paul both wrote to combat this idea, combat these ideas.

These folks, some of these things are still taught today, and they still undermine the faith of many. And I know I mentioned this morning Harold Camping, who has now departed from this life, but for years speculated about dates that the world would end, speculated about dates of the second coming. The one I’m most familiar with was in May of 2011, but there were others before that.

Speculated about those dates, and you know, I was afraid when I started hearing him talk about this. I was afraid of one thing in particular, and that was that as people heard this, it would give more ammunition to the world outside to mock Christianity and to mock our future hope that we’ve been promised in Christ. Started hearing him talk about that and started worrying about that and sure enough as his predictions gained attention in mainstream culture not only was he mocked and I think he was rightfully mocked but folks the Bible was mocked, God was mocked, the Christian faith was mocked and especially as that day passed without incident. Now that should have been a date where people realized the Bible means what it says when it says no man knows the date or the hour.

But instead the rest of us, the rest of us were left in the crosshairs. Oh yeah, he’s coming back, isn’t he? Hey, don’t blame me.

I was no part of that. We were no part of that. We spoke out against teachings like that.

But when we get these ideas wrong about the future hope that we have, when these wrong ideas are embraced, it undermines people’s faith. It undermines people’s faith in God’s promises. And that’s why Paul and John wrote to the believers in the first century about being able to have confidence in God’s promises.

And it still applies to us today. If they could have confidence, we could have confidence. Had a pastor, or not a pastor, whoa, definitely not a pastor, had a professor in college, you know, sort of mock the idea that they believed in the first century that Christ is coming soon, and he still hadn’t come, but you believe he’s coming soon.

And so I just told him, well, it’s even truer now then. It’s even truer now than then, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s even sooner now.

He didn’t like that answer, and I don’t think it convinced him, and it wasn’t meant to convince him, But, you know, if God was true to his promises then, we have no reason to think that he’s not true to his promises now. It’s just that our definition of soon and his are not necessarily the same thing because God takes a different view of eternity and of human history than we do. So they wrote to try to straighten people out and reassure people in their day.

And these things can reassure us and straighten us out in our day too. as we find ourselves starting to wonder, well, what if I got left behind? What if all of this stuff has already come to pass and there’s really nothing to look forward to?

Some people believe that. What if, what if, what if, what if, what if? Or as I said this morning, sometimes our problem may be more practical than theological. It’s not that we doubt his promises.

It’s not that we believe it’s already come to pass. It may be that we’re just so bogged down in the here and now and dealing with, I just get through today that we forget to live in light of the eternal hope that he’s promised us. You know, when you see light at the end of the tunnel, when you see light at the end of the tunnel, the struggle you’re going through is not such a drudgery because you see hope.

You see that there’s something better, but sometimes we get so focused with our heads down on what we’re struggling through here and now that we forget to even look up for the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that’s probably the problem that, that’s probably more of the problem that most of us would have. And so they’ve written and talked about this future hope.

Let’s go back and look at them once again, these passages, and just take a quick glance at them. 1 John chapter 2, starting in verse 25, he said, and this is the promise that he hath promised us even eternal life. God has promised eternal life to us.

And these things have I written unto you concerning them that seduce you, but the anointing which you have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things and is truth and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him. And as I thought more about this passage after leaving here this morning, something else becomes apparent to me in verse 27. It says, The anointing which you have received of him abideth in you.

So this anointing that he’s talking about is something that dwells within us. And because of it, you need not that any man teach you and really teach you otherwise than what you’ve already heard and learned. He said, but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, this anointing we’ve received lives in us and teaches us of all things and is truth and is no lie.

Even as it hath taught you, you shall abide in him. Folks, that anointing is the Holy Spirit of God. As I reread that, and this morning I didn’t tell you that it was something different.

I just talked to you about it being the seal and the marking out of God where God says, you’re mine. Well, folks, the Holy Spirit does that too. I didn’t see that before this afternoon.

That what he’s talking about, this anointing in verse 27, is the Holy Spirit. So there again we have it. He mentions it, Paul mentions it as well as we’re talking about this idea of the eternal hope.

But folks, it’s the Holy Spirit of God. He said, I’ve given you the Holy Spirit, which is what I talked about this morning. God has anointed us, He’s set us apart, He’s marked us as His.

And because of that, nobody needs to come teach us. We don’t need somebody to come bring us new novel ideas and teach us things that nobody’s ever seen in the Scriptures before. and lead us into new doctrines.

We’ve got the Holy Spirit of God who teaches us and leads us and guides us, as John wrote elsewhere, into all truth. Now that doesn’t mean that there’s no role for human teachers, but it means we don’t need somebody to come teach us new things that are contrary to the Word of God, that are contrary to the revelations of the Holy Spirit, when we’ve got the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. And he says, Now, little children, abide in him, that when he shall appear, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming.

Stick with God. Stick with what he’s taught. Stick with the truth the Holy Spirit’s led you into.

And if we do that, we will not have reason to be ashamed when we stand before him one day. If you know that he is righteous, if you know that God is righteous, you know that everyone that doeth righteousness is born of him. He says, so evaluate those teachers you’re listening to.

They’re trying to lead you astray from the hope that God has promised. They’re trying to lead you astray from this promise of eternal life. He said, evaluate them by their fruits, you’ll know them.

And you know that God is righteous, and so anybody who is born of him, anybody who is sent from him is going to do righteousness. That’s John’s message. It’s a little harder on, you need to ignore the false teachers.

Ignore the people who are trying to lead you astray, because you know what the Holy Spirit is telling you. Now we turn to what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, which we also looked at this morning. See, and that verse 27 there is a perfect illustration of what I was talking about this morning.

We can see new things in the scriptures. I saw that this afternoon for being the Holy Spirit. We can see new things in the scriptures in the sense that, oh, I’ve never noticed that before.

We don’t need to see new scriptures in the sense of nobody’s ever seen that, nobody’s ever heard that doctrine in 2,000 years. I’m sure if I go look it up this evening when I go home, some commentary is going to point out that that’s the Holy Spirit. It just took me all these years to see it.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, and we started this morning in verse 1. 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. For in this we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house, which is from heaven.

If so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened. Not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life.

So he’s saying that we have this earthly tabernacle, this earthly house or building decays, but we have another one that’s made by God that is in heaven, not made by human hands, and doesn’t pass away. It’s eternal in the heavens. And he says because of this we groan, we desire to be separated from this body and to be in the next.

not just to be separated from this body and swallowed up in death, but to be separated from this body and to be present in the body that the Lord has made for us in the heavens. Now, he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing, verse 5, is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. This is what we talked about in point one this morning, that God has given us this down payment of the Holy Spirit.

He’s given us the Holy Spirit, this anointing that is talked about in 1 John. He’s given it to us to teach us and to remind us, but also to seal us and set us apart and to show us that he really is serious about fulfilling his promises. And so we look at verse 6, therefore we are always confident.

That’s a different one too. Paul has said before in some of the passages we’ve looked at that we are confident, I am confident, I have this confidence. In this verse he said we are always confident.

It doesn’t matter what somebody else has taught you. It doesn’t matter what life is beating you down with today. We can always have confidence that there’s something better.

There is a future for us in heaven with God. There’s a future where God has promised hope and rewards. And he says, we are always confident, knowing that whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.

He said, we’re not present with the Lord yet, and we take this by faith, because we haven’t seen it yet. Now, I submit to you, faith in the Bible is not necessarily blind faith. And I know some people that has upset before.

Well, we’re supposed to have blind faith. Take God into. .

. Okay, if it’s blind faith, which God? Why is it that you trust the God of the Bible as opposed to the God of the Quran?

Why is it that you trust the God. . .

Why is it that you trust the Jesus of the Bible as opposed to the Jesus of the Book of Mormon? There are some things that we’ve been taught and there’s some evidence to back up the things that the Bible says. Otherwise, blind faith, I could believe that there’s a giant UFO that follows my car around and created me.

It’s not just blind faith in whatever you want to believe in. It’s faith rooted in evidence. But the fact is, if we haven’t seen it with our own eyes, it’s still faith, even if we have evidence to base it on.

We have evidence from the fact that God has raised other people from the dead. Jesus has raised other people from the dead. God raised Jesus from the dead.

That Jesus fulfilled his promises and Jesus fulfilled prophecy and Jesus performed miracles. And we have all sorts of evidence to back up and validate the claims that he is who he says he is. And yet we haven’t seen our future hope yet with our own eyes.

And that’s why it’s faith and not sight. It doesn’t mean blind faith. but it means the evidence of things not seen the substance of things yet hoped for and we can know it’s there and still have not seen it and it’s faith because we’re still present in this body but he says verse 8 we are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the lord he said I know I’m confident that one day I’m going to be absent from this body and I’m going to be present with the lord and as I said this morning that’s a that’s So this happens and that happens.

There’s no intermediate step that’s taught in Scripture. Wherefore, he says in verse 9, we labor that whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. We labor so that whether we’re here on earth or we’re with him, that we’re worthy of the calling.

And so this morning I shared with you the first point of the message. This confidence in our future hope. This confidence that we can have because of the promises of God.

We need to know, first of all, God promises He’ll never leave us or forget us. And we know that because we have the earnest of the Holy Spirit. We have that down payment.

So number two tonight is that God promises, here’s another promise of God, God promises that when believers die, we go immediately to be with Him. We go immediately to be with Him. Now, I don’t know how it worked in the days before Christ. There’s all sorts of speculation.

Where did David go? Where did Abraham go? You know, the Bible talks about Lazarus being in Abraham’s bosom.

It doesn’t specifically call it heaven. I don’t know if it was the heaven that we go to now or what, but it sounds like a pretty good place. Jesus told the thief on the cross, today you’ll be with me in paradise.

I don’t know, and there’s a lot of speculation. We may never know exactly how it worked before Christ. But we know and are taught now that since what Christ accomplished on the cross, that immediately when we are absent from the body, that we are present with the Lord. That is his promise.

And Paul says we are confident. We’re confident. It’s not just I believe.

I think so. He says I am confident. I would stake my life on this.

And really he is. Think about that for a minute. He’s staking his life on this.

He dies. He doesn’t get a do-over if he’s wrong. And so for him to say I know that when I’m absent from the body I’ll be present with the Lord.

To be that emphatic, he’s got to not just believe, but he’s got to know that he’s right. So he says, I’m confident. And folks, remember, this is not just Paul writing.

This is Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. So if Paul says, I am confident that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, then it is a promise from God that when we are absent from the body, we’re present with the Lord. There should be no fear for us as believers.

No fear in confronting the icy grip of death because we don’t have to look at it as the same way as the rest of the world. Paul wrote to the believers at Thessalonica, we mourn not as those who have no hope. If it were not for Christ, if it were not for the promise of God that immediately upon our death we go to be with him, if it were not for that promise, death would be a sad thing.

When we lose a loved one, you know, that word is not really a great explanation of what happens to a Christian. We’ve lost them. no they’re not lost and I’m not I’m not getting on you about using it I say that as well because I don’t know what else to say they’re not lost we know where they are and we know we’re going to see them again if we’re talking about a believer they’re present with the Lord that’s where we’re going it’s a joyful thing it’s a joyful thing for them I’ve always said excuse me at dealing with funerals for believers it’s okay to be sad I know there are some who we’re going to be spiritual and we’re going to be joyful.

Okay, it’s not always a joyful occasion. I get what you’re saying. I’m sorry, I’m not that spiritual. I can be joyful for them and sad for me at the same time because they’re experiencing the embrace of the Lord and we’re experiencing separation here.

So it’s okay for us to be sad for ourselves. But folks, it’s not sad the same way as when I’ve done the funeral of a non-believer. What do you say to the family?

There’s no hope in that. It’s too late at that point. But for a believer, we shouldn’t be so overcome with grief that there’s no joy.

It’s okay to grieve. But there should be joy in there as well. Knowing what they are experiencing now.

And that one day we’ll be reunited because as soon as we’re absent from the body, we too are present with the Lord. It’s a promise from God. But folks, when it comes to confronting our own mortality, there really shouldn’t be any fear.

Now, I do worry about what I leave behind. undone here. Lord, what if my kids are still little?

What if I haven’t finished this? What if I haven’t done that? What about, you know, all sorts of things that I worry about leaving unfinished here.

But in confronting the, in confronting my own mortality, it’s not a scary thought of, oh, what’s going to happen to me? I know where I’m going. And if you’re a believer tonight, you have the promise of God to know where you’re going.

To be absent from the body is to be present from the Lord. We have that as a promise of God. It’s a little harder to worry about the future when we know we have that to look forward to.

Doesn’t mean that it’s not a long, hard road here on earth in the meantime, but we know, going back to this morning’s analogy, we know eventually He’s going to get us to where we need to be. Third of all, tonight, God promises that when Christ returns, believers will stand before Him unashamed. Think about that.

He promises that when He returns, we as His people will stand before Him unashamed. he says to abide if we go back to 1 John where we were earlier he says in verse 28 now little children abide in him that when he shall appear we may have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming folks to abide with him we can’t do anything else if we’re believers born again bought with his blood and sealed by the Holy Spirit to the day of redemption we can’t do anything but abide in him that doesn’t mean that at times we won’t wander. It doesn’t mean at times we won’t slip and fall and mess up.

It doesn’t mean any of that, but it means we’re in Him. We are in Him, period. We’re in Christ. We’re sealed by the Holy Spirit.

We belong to Him. So this is not so much a command in verse 28 as really, I think, a statement of the truth that if we do abide in Him, if we do abide in Him, when He shall appear, we will have confidence and not be ashamed before him at his coming. Now, how all this works, how all this works is still a little bit mysterious.

We are taught in the Bible that there will be rewards for our service. We’re taught that those who teach will be held to stricter accountability. One of the most frightening passages in the entire Bible for me personally says that we’ll give an account for every idle word.

And I talk a lot. So there’s going to be a lot to comb over. I don’t know how all this works.

Because I know that I’m going to stand before God with a whole lot of sin to answer for. But I also know that that sin is already under the blood of Christ. So I’m not entirely sure how that works. The best I can imagine is I stand before God in a brief moment realizing how truly empty-handed I am as we look over my life.

And then he says it’s all forgiven. It’s all forgiven. I think in that moment we really will understand the gravity, the weight of grace.

Because right now we see ourselves and we compare ourselves to other people and we think, I’m basically a good person. When we stand before God and see our whole lives in contrast to Him, we’ll realize how much we really deserve different from God. And yet for Him to say, because of Christ, it’s all forgiven.

And when all that sin is forgiven, when all that sin is under the blood, you know what, we stand before Him clothed not in our own righteousness not clothed in tattered rags but clothed in the righteousness of Christ. In white robes we stand before Him and no longer is there a need to be ashamed. And again, some of this is speculation on my part but I sort of imagine standing before Him still ashamed over the sin that He’s forgiven. The Bible says He’ll wipe away all tears from our eyes.

I imagine tears of shame and God telling me, God telling us because of the righteousness of Christ, there’s no need to be ashamed anymore. It’s all forgiven. He’s all, he’s put it as far from us as the east is from the west. I’m not saying that we’re not forgiven now.

But as I imagine how all this works out, I imagine we realize how much in that moment he forgave us up. Okay, take that for what it’s worth. Study it out for yourself.

I don’t know. when it comes to how all this times out in the future and what happens in what order, none of us really know. I know what I think will happen based on Scripture, but I could be shown I’m wrong.

What I do know is that Jesus will return, that we will stand before God one day, and I know that this tells us that we won’t be ashamed. We won’t be ashamed. We have this promise of God that when we stand before Him, abiding in Him, Again, don’t ever get the idea that it’s because I’m so good, I’m so righteous, I’ll stand before Him.

I just did a wonderful job. No, abiding in Him, clothed in His righteousness, will stand before God and not need to be ashamed. I don’t know about you, but knowing who I am, glimpsing already who I am in contrast to God, that’s an amazing thought to me.

You mean I won’t have to feel the guilt? You mean I won’t have to feel the weight of this sin for all eternity? Standing in, I think I shared with you the example in recent weeks about standing under fluorescent light.

You know, anybody can look good under candlelight. I think that’s why people like to go to dark restaurants when they’re on a date. You’ve got a candle in front of you and a spotlight behind you, anybody can look good.

You turn that spotlight around on yourself and you get close into the spotlight, like, boy, we’re going to see all the flaws, all the imperfections, all the crow’s feet that are starting to form there. Folks, the closer we get to the light of Christ, I think we see ourselves for who we really are. And stepping into that light that day, he says, still no need to be ashamed anymore.

It’s an amazing thought. Fourth of all, finally tonight, God promises that our reward is eternal life in Christ. It’s a simple place to end. It’s the simple place where we started.

See, He promises that He won’t forget us. He promises that we go to be with Him. He promises that we’ll stand before Him unashamed.

But folks, He promises too that that reward of being in His presence, that reward of experiencing Him, experiencing unity with Him, experiencing worship of Him, experiencing His love and His light, that that’s a reward that He gives and never takes back. I can’t imagine anything worse than spending 10,000 years in his presence and then it ending. I’ve heard the example, I’ve heard this said at funerals before, you know, don’t wish for him to come back, he’d be mad.

He’d be mad. Can you imagine being in heaven and being told, no, no, you’ve got to go back to this? I’ve got to go from that to this?

Can you imagine being in the presence of God and being told, okay, it’s over now. That would be horrible. Once you’ve experienced the presence of God, I can’t imagine that we’ll want to be any place else.

You know what? We’re not just there 10,000 years, a million years, whatever. And then it comes to an end.

We’re promised eternal life. He says in verse 25 of 1 John 2, this is the promise that he has promised us, even eternal life. It’s a life with him, ladies and gentlemen.

It’s a reward with Him that does not end. That does not end. The next time you worry about the future, you know what, the next time you worry about the next five minutes, try to consider this.

I’m not saying that it makes all of our problems go away here on earth and that we don’t have to deal with any problems. I’m saying if we could keep a glimpse of eternity in mind, if we could keep a glimpse of the future hope and know that, folks, it’s not just pie in the sky, it’s not just something that we speculate about, It is something that God has promised and that the apostles who knew Jesus Christ said we could be confident in if we remember the promise that he’s made and the way that he always keeps his promises and know that this is waiting for us. Folks, it makes the march through the tunnel a lot easier when we see the light at the end of it and to know that the drudgery will, whatever it may be, will come to an end and that we have this future hope and this future reward that he’s promised us.