Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- October 9, 2005

13So I pray that God, who gives you hope, will keep you happy and full of peace as you believe in him. May you overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul refers to God as the “God of all hope”. Hope in the New Testament is not always something that is future. In many passages it indicates something that is strong, certain, fixed, unmovable, anchored in the very throne of God. Hebrews 6:19 is an example of this:

19This confidence is like a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It leads us through the curtain of heaven into God’s inner sanctuary.

This hope is an absolute certainty and no idle dream of ours. God is our present source of strength and support, our advocate and comforter. With God our present and our future as well are as bright as the promises of God.

Among people who consider and ponder spiritual things there are two kinds of people. There are believers and doubters. If someone is a doubter, no explanation will satisfy him, because he prefers to doubt.  On the other hand, for a man who truly believes, no explanation is necessary. He has a supernatural perception of divine reality.
Faith honors God and God honors faith!

A story from the life of missionaries Robert and Mary Moffat illustrates this truth. For 10 years this couple labored faithfully in Bechuanaland (now called Botswana) without one ray of encouragement to brighten their way. They could not report a single convert. Finally the directors of their mission board began to question the wisdom of continuing the work. The thought of leaving their post, however, brought great grief to this devoted couple, for they felt sure that God was in their labors, and that they would see people turn to Christ in due season.

They stayed; and for a year or two longer, darkness reigned. Then one day a friend in England sent word to the Moffats that she wanted to mail them a gift and asked what they would like. Trusting that in time the Lord would bless their work, Mrs. Moffat replied, "Send us a communion set; I am sure it will soon be needed." God honored that dear woman's faith. The Holy Spirit moved upon the hearts of the villagers, and soon a little group of six converts was united to form the first Christian church in that land. The communion set from England was delayed in the mail; but on the very day before the first commemoration of the Lord's super in Bechuanaland, the set arrived.

As Paul reaches this point in his letter to the Romans, after the verse of our text for today, there is a change from doctrinal teaching to providing spiritual lessons from Paul’s personal relationships with other members of the body of Christ.

Our text gives us a summary of the blessed life we have as members of the body of Christ. It presents us with seven aspects of the Christian life that we should understand:

1. The source of our life is the God of all hope.
2. The measure of our life is that we shall be filled “with all joy and peace.”
3. The quality of that life is joy and peace which He desires for us.
4. The condition of that life is faith – we enter this life in Christ by believing;  it is faith and by faith alone that counts.
5. The purpose of that life is that we might abound – over flow with hope.
6. The enabling of that life is divine power.
7. The Director of that life is the Holy Spirit

These seven aspects sum up the Christian life. And it is a life that many Christians know little about.

Christ has provided peace and fullness of joy for us. These two qualities are ours and all hope is also ours as well. Why do so many believers fail to dwell in peace and fullness of joy? It is because they do not truly believe.

What is it to believe?

I can’t tell you how many times I have had someone tell me that they wished that they could have the faith that I have. “I wish I could believe like you do.” “I could never have the faith that you have.”

Faith in God is the same thing as the faith we exercise every day of the week. How many times have you exercised faith in some manner today? Let’s just name a few:

You believed that the alarm clock would awaken you this morning.
You believed that there would be hot water for your shower this morning.
You believed that the coffee maker would come on while you were in the shower.
You believed that the floor would hold you up when you got out of bed.
You believed that it was safe to leave your house.
You believed that your car would start and that you could safely drive to church.
You believed that there would be church today.
If you came for breakfast, you believed that someone else would be here to eat with.
You believed that the food would be ready and safe to eat.
You believed that I would be here to conduct the worship service and preach to you.
You believed that the Hotel would allow us to meet here today.

We could go on and on and tick off the things that you have already exercised faith about this morning. On the basis of all these things you acted and are here this morning.

That is how we must believe God.
He has given us promises.
He tells us to commit ourselves to Him, and believe in Him and he will work in our behalf.

Our lives are built upon faith and all our relationships are sustained by faith. We need to remember Paul’s statement to the Philippian Christians: “Being confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will keep on perfecting it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:6).

By what name does God call us…who have trusted in Christ?

 A disciple is a follower of the Lord.
 A saint is one whom God sees as in Christ.
 A brother is a member of the body of Christ.
 A witness is one to whom God has committed a testimony before a lost and dying world.

We are all these,  but God has one more name for us:  believer. This name characterized you when you came to the cross and you trusted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.

The spiritual work of the Trinity in the individual believer begins, as we have seen in our study of the letter to the Romans, in the eternal plan made within the Godhead. So it is that the God of hope will fill all believers with all joy in peace when they truly believe.

God the Father was the designer of all this. Jesus Christ was the arranger of everything that blesses us spiritually. Man had separated himself from God and he had to be brought back to God. Man could not do it on his own because he had lost the power to come back by himself. He had become spiritually dead in his trespasses and sins.

Then the Lord Jesus moved. He stepped down from the throne of the universe and became a man like us. Jesus Christ re-established contact with fleeing mankind. He pursued man just as he did in the garden when the Father pursued Adam calling out “Where are you?”

So it was that Jesus came all the way down from heaven to tabernacle among us to become the Savior, our Redeemer, the way of access for us to God, our intercessor, our advocate, our guide. Jesus did pay it all! He has redeemed us!

Let’s go back to our text for today:
13”So I pray that God, who gives you hope, will keep you happy and full of peace as you believe in him. May you overflow with hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The power to live the life of a believer is power that is given us by the Holy Spirit. We cannot do it on our own. For example, take love. We are commanded to love one another, to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and then our neighbor as ourselves. We try to do it and what do we discover? We discover that we cannot pump up love on demand. There are those we don’t even like. So how are we going to love them? We can’t do it on our own.

We cannot love with divine love until the Holy Spirit enables us by the power he sets free within us. He offers it to us…but we have to believe that the power is available and that we can have it to exercise in our lives as we live them out daily.

Let me close with this:

The following letter was found in a baking powder can wired to the handle of an old pump. The pump offered the only hope of drinking water on a very long and seldom-used trail across Nevada’s Amargosa Desert:

“This pump is all right as of June, 1932. I put a new sucker washer into it and it ought to last five years. But the washer dries out and the pump has got to be primed. Under the white rock I buried a bottle of water, out of the sun and the cork end up. There’s enough water in it to prime the pump, but not if you drink some first. Pour about one-fourth and let her soak to wet the leather. Then pour in the rest medium fast and pump like crazy. You’ll git water. The well has never  run dry. Have faith. When you git watered up, fill the bottle and put it back like you found it for the next feller (signed) Desert  Pete.

P.S.  Don’t go drinking the water first. Prime the pump with it and you’ll git all you can hold.  --Keith Miller and Bruce Larson, The Edge of Adventure.

Have faith he says. Be what God says you are… a believer. Your future is as sure and bright as the promises of God which are as certain as God Himself. Be the challenge to believe that someone you know needs this week…by exercising your faith in the God who gives you hope. May He fill you with all joy and peace as you believe him today!

--Dennis Gleason