Hope amid Hopelessness

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Well, recently I had to drive my dad down to Durant for something, and it made me think about the last time that we took a road trip together, just he and me. And some of you have heard, and I consequently prayed, Father, let’s not let the vehicle break down this time. Some of you have heard about my harrowing adventure breaking down in the middle of New Mexico.

A couple years ago, Dad was with me. We were coming back from Phoenix. We broke down in the bustling metropolis of Santa Rosa, New Mexico, which you may not know where that is.

Even if you’ve been through it, you may not know where it is. We broke down in the parking lot of a Dollar General. And at first I thought there’s some hope right here because we broke down in the parking lot of a Dollar General right next to a mechanic’s garage. It’s like, this is great.

We couldn’t push the vehicle up the hill, but I was able to carry the car battery up the hill. Well, it would have been great, except it was 4. 45 on a Friday afternoon, and the mechanic was knocking back with a cold one and just biding his time, which he couldn’t fix our vehicle in 15 minutes anyway, but he wouldn’t be back in until Monday, because apparently in small towns, nothing breaks on the weekends or in the evenings.

So I felt pretty hopeless. We did get the battery charged enough to get us down the road a little further, and I hoped there would be a car dealership in the next town. I was told in Tucumcari there’s a car dealership.

There was no such car dealership. So I stopped at Napa and bought an extra battery. And we continued on toward Amarillo.

And I kept hoping maybe I can buy a car in Amarillo. Maybe there’ll be places open late on a Friday night like in Oklahoma City. No such luck.

Maybe I can rent a car. No. Maybe I will pay hundreds of dollars at this point for somebody to Uber drive me back to Oklahoma.

I am not starting life anew out here. And every hope I had was dashed at every turn. Every little circumstance that I clung to that I’m going to get home tonight, every one of those hopes was just dashed.

And I felt like every time there was some hope, there was another bump in the road. And I’m pretty calm and level-headed in situations like that until it’s been about 15 situations in a row like that, and I start to lose hope and start to fall apart a little bit. But there’s one reason why on that trip, on that day, why I didn’t completely fall apart.

That’s because my dad was with me. Because of who was with me. Dad was able to say, you know, it’s okay.

It’s going to be okay. We’ll get through this. You know, when none of my plans worked out, he worked out plan B.

If we can just get to Amarillo, which we did, I’ll pay for another night’s hotel room. We’ll go to the car dealership in the morning. And so we did all that.

Now, the reason I didn’t fall apart, the reason I didn’t completely lose hope is because of who I was with. And I realized this, as far as hopeless situations go, this was pretty minor. It’s just one of those situations where you’ve already been on the road a week.

You’re exhausted. You’re tired. You’re ready to see your family.

Everything just seems like a much bigger deal. I realized that it’s pretty minor as far as hopeless situations go. But it illustrates kind of what that is like, that hope is sometimes more about who you’re with or who’s with you than any kind of change in your circumstances. Because holding out for a change of circumstances wasn’t working real well for me.

So we all feel hopeless at some point in time. Everybody in here has felt hopeless at some point, and if you haven’t, you will. Just buckle your seatbelt, you will.

It may be a momentary feeling of hopelessness, something pretty minor like car trouble. or it might be a much worse situation. You know, it could be a bad diagnosis from your doctor.

It could be a spouse who just suddenly announces they’re leaving. It could be a prodigal child that you’ve pled with and you’ve pled with God about and still no change in that circumstance. It could be a financial hole that you can’t seem to get out of.

We all, at some time or another, feel hopeless. Sometimes the whole world feels hopeless. Sometimes we get into situations and circumstances that we can’t control it and we can’t fix it and the problems just seem to be insurmountable.

And you’ve probably felt some of that recently. Maybe things are going fine in your little world, but the wider world is just out of control, right? We’ve had the pandemic.

We’ve got unrest in the streets, division in our society, involuntary isolation where we’re stuck and can’t be around other people, a ballooning national debt. And by the way, when I was thinking about things going wrong, and I tried, I think it was earlier this week to look up what the national debt was then, it wouldn’t come up. Like, Google was, apparently Google could not handle the number of the national debt.

Now, it turns out Google was having some problems that day. The national debt has wireless connectivity issues, okay? It was that bad.

I thought, this is worse than I thought. No, Google was just down, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if the number of the national debt was so high that Google couldn’t even handle it, right? These things just get out of control.

And sometimes we get in these circumstances where we as individuals or we as a community or we as a church or even we as a nation feel hopeless and we don’t know where to turn. But the Bible tells us where we can find hope. If you’ll turn with me to John chapter 11 this morning.

John chapter 11, the Bible tells us where our hope comes from. And this morning we’re continuing on with this series I’ve been doing about how to navigate our difficult times in a way that draws us closer to Christ. And each week we’ve looked at one of the things that we’ll experience, one of the responses or one of the emotions that we’ll experience during difficult times, and what the Bible teaches about those particular kinds of difficulty. And this morning I want to talk about the problem of hopelessness.

And we’re going to be in John chapter 11, and just for the sake of a little bit of brevity, We’re going to start in verse 17, and we’re going to go through verse 44. Let me read it to you. You know what?

I like what Brother Mike did last week, having everybody stand, but this is a long passage. I tell you what, if you can stand for the whole time, stand with me. If not, nobody’s going to think badly of you for sitting.

But if you can, stand with me as we read God’s Word together. Verse 17 says, So when Jesus came, he found that he had already been in the tomb four days. That’s Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days.

Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him, but Mary was sitting in the house. Now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? She said to him, Yes, Lord. I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.

Verse 28. And when she had said these things, she went her way and secretly called Mary her sister, saying, The teacher has come and is calling for you. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came to him.

Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met him. Then the Jews who were with her in the house and comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up quickly and went out, followed her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there. Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see.

Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, See how much he loved him. Verse 37.

And some of them said, Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying? Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it.

Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?

Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me, and I know that you always hear me. But because of the people who were standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me.

Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. And Jesus said to them, loose him and let him go.

You may be seated. This morning I want to talk a little bit about this hopeless situation that Mary and Martha found themselves in. They both felt hopeless.

They both felt hopeless. Martha felt hopeless. Her brother was dead, and hope had not arrived when she thought it should, because she said to Jesus in verse 21, Lord, if you had been here, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Just for the sake of time, I couldn’t read all of chapter 11 to you, but in the part before we picked up in verse 17, Martha had actually sent for Jesus days earlier. Mary and Martha had. Come, Lazarus is sick.

And Jesus said, well, basically we’ve got time. Now she said, if you had been here, if you’d bothered to show up on time, my brother would not have died. Now, Martha’s an interesting study because she did have some faith in Jesus.

She said, whatever you ask of the Lord, I know he’ll give you. But still, Martha was grappling with this sense of hopelessness. I know that you can do anything.

Has anybody else ever felt this way or just me? God, I know you can do anything, but I’m not sure you will in this situation. and so even in our prayers we can sometimes feel hopeless she’s telling Jesus I know you can do whatever but you haven’t you didn’t so she was looking for hope somewhere she’s clinging to hope and yes there’s an element there of faith in Jesus but she’s trying to comfort herself with theological truth and there’s nothing wrong with with theological truth it’s much better than trying to comfort yourself with a theological lie but she’s trying to comfort herself uh by by this mental knowledge of the truth of theology because she believed in the power of God.

She said, whatever you ask of God, he’ll give you. And she believed in a future resurrection. We say this all the time when someone passes away, we know we’ll see them again.

And she said in verse 24, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day. She was putting her hope in this future resurrection. Now, in terms of where we can put our hope, it’s not the worst place to put our hope.

We can be hopeful because of a future resurrection. But let me tell you, the resurrection is not actually what we’re hoping in. What we’re hoping in is Jesus, being with Jesus at the resurrection, being raised by Jesus in the resurrection.

Because if we’re just raised to walk around on earth again in the same body without Jesus, what kind of hope is that going to be? We’re just going to be undead with all the same aches and pains and maybe worse, right? The hope in the resurrection is Jesus, but she’s comforting herself in this theological truth of something that’s going to come far off in the future, but it wasn’t enough to take away her sense of hopelessness.

She’s had this, or she’s clinging to this theological truth, but she still feels hopeless because she tells him in verse 21, Lord, if you had just been here, my brother would not have died. Now, Mary also felt hopeless. her brother was dead same guy her brother was dead just like Mary just like Martha excuse me I may mix up their names a little bit today just like Martha hope had not helped and hope had not arrived when she thought it should because in verse 32 she told Jesus the exact same thing that Martha had told Jesus Lord if you’d just been here my brother would not have died and she was looking for hope not in theological truth, but she was in a more emotional place.

And we see that in the way Jesus deals with them. Jesus has a conversation with Martha. Jesus weeps with Mary because it’s where they were.

It’s where they were looking for their comfort. She was looking for hope in a change of circumstances that maybe she’d feel better because she’s got all these mourners around her to comfort her. The Bible says she was surrounded by an entourage of mourners in verse 31.

And some of these people, the way it’s phrased, some of these people had come from Jerusalem, which was not, I mean, that far off. We would make that drive today without a thought. But they were a few miles away.

They were in a different town, and you had to walk everywhere. So people had come from far and wide to come and mourn with Mary. Mary, in her time of hopelessness, was surrounded by all these people, all these friends, all these family members, all these well-wishers to comfort her and put their arms around her and to give her support, but it still wasn’t enough.

And I know sometimes we get in in seemingly hopeless situations and we just want somebody to be with us. We want somebody to comfort us. We want somebody to put their arms around us and tell us it’s going to be okay.

But sometimes even that is not enough to take away the sense of hopelessness because she still felt hopeless and still told Jesus, if you’d just been here, my brother would not have died. Now, when both of them, when they say it, there’s a little bit of an accusatory tone to it, but it’s more crying out in pain and despair. You know, we can feel more than one emotion at once.

Sometimes they gang up on us. And I see all of that in there. There’s accusation, there’s pleading, there’s pain, and they’re crying out to Jesus if you’ve just been here.

But when they thought there was no hope, when they thought there was no hope, Jesus was there. Jesus arrived. Maybe not on their timetable, but Jesus arrived at just the right time, and he genuinely cared about their situation.

Because verse 33 tells us that Jesus saw her weeping, Mary, and saw the Jews who were with her weeping, and it says he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. He was agitated. He felt this, and I don’t mean that in the sense of being irritated, but this stirred him up.

He felt this deeply what they were feeling. So much so that verse 35 says Jesus wept. Jesus didn’t tell Mary, it’ll be fine, snap out of it, just a stiff upper lip.

No, he cried with her because Lazarus was Jesus’ friend too. And I think Jesus was moved not only by that, but the Bible says by the pain that he saw in Mary and the others mourning. Jesus came to the tomb in verse 38, and it says he groaned in himself again.

Deep within himself, he was troubled over this, not the situation, because he had the situation under control, but he was troubled by what they were experiencing going through the situation. And so Jesus came and he brought hope with him, not merely changing their circumstances, but demonstrating the glory of God and the power of God in their lives amid those circumstances. See, he could have spared them those circumstances altogether.

He could have spared Lazarus from death, but it was more important for him to give them a lasting hope by demonstrating the power of God through those circumstances. And we may not like it. I don’t always like it.

But sometimes God will let us go through difficult circumstances so that He can show us His power and His glory, which ends up being better for us in the long run than if He’d let us avoid the hopeless circumstance in the first place. And He told them in verse 40, Didn’t I say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? And when He prayed to God in verses 41 and 42, He said, I know you hear me.

I know you always hear me. We’re on the same page here. I’m just praying this so that they out there will know that you hear me, and they’ll know what’s going on here.

And so he stepped up to the grave, and he cried out, Lazarus, come forth. And when he did that, he was doing more than just raising Lazarus from the dead. I mean, that’s pretty incredible just by itself, but he was doing more than that.

He was showing that he was sent by God. He was showing that he had power over life and death. He was showing that he had the ability to give life to all who believed.

All these things that he’s talked about earlier in his conversations with Mary and Martha. He’s demonstrating his power in all these things. He’s showing that he himself was the Messiah and the Son of God that Martha professed him to be in verse 27.

He was showing himself to be the one they had waited for and hoped for all these years. See, he wasn’t just the answer to this hopeless situation with Lazarus having died. He was the answer to their hopeless situation as a nation where they’ve been waiting for a Messiah for thousands of years.

They’ve been waiting for God to do something that God has promised, and Jesus is telling them that he’s the answer to all these things that they’ve been waiting for. All their hopes are fulfilled in Jesus. Their hope was not meant to be in a mere earthly Messiah who was just going to change their earthly circumstances.

Their hope was in Jesus Christ who came to change their eternity. That’s why so many people missed who Jesus was the first time because he wasn’t what they thought they were looking for. But he came to bring them hope, even greater hope, in an even more hopeless situation.

And all of these people in the story, they were looking for hope in the wrong place. And I’m not going to sing the song to you about looking for love in all the wrong places. They were looking for hope in all the wrong places.

They were looking for hope in the possibility that their circumstances might improve. Hey, if I just hold out a little longer, things will get better. If I can just get through this initial morning, we can get Lazarus buried, I know I’ll start to feel better.

I know that things will improve here. They’re looking for hope in the possibility of their circumstances improving, or at least them getting better at handling the circumstances. Mary was trying to come to terms with Lazarus’ death emotionally.

She was seeking comfort in the presence of other mourners, and it just wasn’t enough. And Martha was trying to come to terms with Lazarus’s death intellectually. She was seeking comfort in her own understanding of the future, her own ability to plan and figure out what’s going to happen and know the next steps.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to bring her any hope, because their hope was not in their circumstances or their understanding or their ability to handle it. Their hope was in Jesus Christ. That’s when they had hope.

That’s when hope was there is when Jesus showed up in the hopeless situation. Their relationship with him was the only thing that was going to truly bring them hope right then and in the future. They just needed Jesus.

They just needed Jesus to be there with them right then to give them hope that it’s okay now and that it’s going to be okay later on. The resurrection, all of that meant nothing without Jesus. The mourners around them meant nothing without Jesus.

He’s the one that brought them hope. But you and I do the same thing. We look for hope in all the wrong places.

We do just like Mary and Martha did. We get into these hopeless situations. Sometimes they just feel hopeless.

Sometimes they truly are desperate situations, but we get into them and we cling to all sorts of wrong things as sources of hope, even though I think we know they never can bring hope. We may cling to this idea that our circumstances will change. Oh, it’ll get better.

It’ll get better or I’ll just get better at handling it and I’ll get through this. We cling to that as a source of hope. We cling to people around us.

And in truly hopeless situations, other people can’t really bring us hope. We cling to our resources. We think, well, as long as I’ve got money in the bank and food in the pantry, we’ll be fine.

We cling to our plans. Now, as long as I know all the steps and everything stays outlined, as long as we keep going the direction I think we’re going, everything will be fine. We cling to all these things for hope.

And I know we do this because I’ve done it myself. I’ve done it myself. I’ve been through some ugly times in the last 10 years or so.

Most of you know I’ve lost a few children. I say lost. I look forward to meeting them in heaven one day. But I knew that.

I knew you’ll be standing in the hospital, and they’ve passed, and there’s nothing you can do. And I’ve comforted myself with the knowledge that I’ll see them again. I know that’s the case.

I have no doubt about that. It’s a true statement, but it didn’t change the fact that in that situation, I still felt hopeless. I still felt broken because seeing them again, that’s a long way away.

And I’m hurting now. And I remember when I found myself unexpectedly as a single father, I thought, well, I’ll get a routine down and this will get easier. Does raising children ever get easier?

Some of you are still raising 40 and 50 year olds. You tell me it doesn’t get any easier. I’ll get in a routine and it will get easier.

It did get a little easier. Once I got a routine and we get up this time every morning, we buy groceries this day of the week, we’ll get this figured out. You know, I got into a routine.

The work got done. All the work got done, but it never did get easier. And I’d have people help me out, people from the church and people, family members come help me out.

That helped with the work. It was still just a painful situation. You feel broken.

And all of this clinging to routine or theological truth, none of it could bring me hope in that moment. And what I realized is what I need in this moment is just to cry out to Jesus. And that’s not to diminish especially the theological truth.

That’s important. It’s not to diminish the help of others. That was so important.

But at some point, everybody else goes home. The kids are in bed. You’re sitting there alone by yourself, broken.

And the only thing you can do to deal with it is to cry out to Jesus. the only thing you can do is to talk to him about it to pour your heart out to him like mary and martha did lord if you’d been here my brother would not have died in my darkest moments the only solace has been to run to jesus and trust him not just to provide everything I need but to be everything I need because he was everything that they needed to show up right then and so the lesson that we take from this text is that we shouldn’t look for hope in a change of circumstances but in the presence of Jesus. Let me repeat that in case I went too fast for you.

We should not look for hope in a change of circumstances, but in the presence of Jesus. Folks, whatever’s going on in our country right now, whatever’s going on in our community, whatever’s going on in your life, don’t think it’ll just get better if there’s a change of circumstances. What we need is Jesus.

I tell you what, our country needs to turn to Jesus. Our church needs to cling to Jesus. We as individuals need to cling to Jesus if we’re going to make it through the things that we’re facing.

They were clinging to other things, but the answer was right in front of them. They actually did the right thing. Even as they’re clinging to all these other things, Mary and Martha actually did the right thing in the story.

Verse 3 of chapter 11 tells us they called for Jesus when Lazarus was sick. Verse 20 tells us that Martha ran out to Jesus. And verse 32 tells us that Mary threw herself on Jesus, threw herself at his feet.

I can’t think of anything better for us to do than to call out to Jesus, run to Jesus, and throw ourselves on Jesus. Our answer is not to wait for our circumstances to change, not to rely on our resources to get us through difficulty, not to look to other people to fix it or trust our plans and our answers. When we find ourselves without hope, when we find ourselves in a hopeless situation, our answer is to call out to Jesus, to run to Jesus, and to ball at his feet.

So whatever your situation is today, your hope is Jesus Christ. Now he can change your situation. He can also change you in your situation. He can carry you through your situation, but it’s not the change of the circumstances or anything else that is our real hope.

It’s that Jesus is with us in the midst of those circumstances. It’s that he himself is our hope, that we have that relationship with him. We have that connection to God through him.

That’s where we find our hope in difficult circumstances. This morning, we need to understand that our most hopeless situation, the most hopeless situation that anybody faces right now, is not coronavirus. It’s not unrest in the streets.

It’s not the national debt. It’s not any of those things. The most hopeless situation that anybody faces is the prospect of eternity separated from God in hell.

And it’s so hopeless what makes this such a hopeless situation is that we’re all headed in this direction and there’s nothing we can do to change it. It is entirely out of our hands to get ourselves right with God. There’s not a thing we can do to earn ourselves God’s forgiveness.

There’s not a thing we can do to reconcile ourselves to a holy God. But in this situation too, Jesus is our hope. He is our only hope in this situation.

Because where our sin, every act of disobedience, every disobedient thought or word, where all of those things separate us eternally from a holy God, and they incur judgment and a penalty from God that has to be paid, where our sin does that and ensures that we are separated from God, Jesus came to bear our punishment in full, to pay all the penalty that we deserved. He was nailed to the cross where he shed his blood and he died to pay for our sins in full so that we could be forgiven. And now God offers us because Jesus died for our sins and rose again, God offers to forgive us and offers to accept us as his children and give us eternal life with him because of what Jesus Christ did.

Our hope is not in being good enough or in going to church or being a nice person. Our hope is in Jesus Christ and what he did for us. So the answer this morning, if you say, I know I’m separated from God, I know I’m destined for hell, or I don’t know for sure that I’d be in heaven, then the answer today is to cry out to God and admit that you’re a sinner and that you know your sin is wrong.

Agree with God about your sin. Acknowledge Jesus as your one and only Savior. Tell God you believe with all your heart that Jesus died to pay for your sins in full and rose again to prove it.

And then ask God to forgive your sins because of what you did, because of what Jesus did, excuse me. And if you’ll do that, if you’ll cry out to God this morning and genuinely trust Christ as your Savior, God promises to forgive you, to save you, and to change you.