33. The Christian Hope rides on TWO wheels! REALIZED HOPE of Jesus Christ’s Resurrection! FUTURE HOPE of our Resurrection!
34.
Hinweis der Redaktion
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SECOND IN A THREE PART SERIES ON WHAT IT TAKES ME TO MOVE FORWARD AS A PART OF THIS BODY FIRST, LAST JULY, NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS Title of a Book by Desmond Tutu, Chairmen of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Forgiveness is the Cross Shaped Keyhole through which every Christian must pass for them to have a future in faith. My own story of forgiveness. - trying to make sense of where we have been as a church, where we are now and where we might be going. - last June my message was no future without forgivemess. There is such a thing as radical evil. Only way through pain and out the otherside is forgiveness Reflecting on my personal journey today I talk about hope just s there is no future without forgivemess there is also no future without hope.
NOTES: FRENCH GENERAL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE ONCE SAID, LEADERS ARE DEALERS IN HOPE! PROBLEM: SOMETIMES THEY ARE ALSO DEALERS IN HYPE! Once it becomes difficult to discern the hype from the hope people get disillusioned. That how it has been at new Life these past years. So people have gotten disappointed.
NOTES: All politicians get it, IS THIS THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES?
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NOT SURE IF PEOPLE KNOW WHAT TODAY IS? FIRST SUNDAY OF MAY IS OUR ANNIVERSARY SUNDAY AS A CHURCH. NEW LIFE WAS FOUNDED MAY, 1986 THIS IS OUR 22 ND ANNIVERSARY! SO HAPPY BIRTHDAY NEW LIFE! HOW MANY PEOPLE WERE HERE THAT FIRST SUNDAY? HOW MANY HAVE BEEN HERE 20 YEARS? THA’S HOW LONG OUR FAMILY HAS ATTENDED? WHERE IS EVERYBODY? SOME PEOPLE LEFT MAD BECAUSE OF HURT. MY MESSAGE LAST YEAR WAS THAT UNLESS WE CAN FIRGIVE, THERE IS NO FUTURE FOR RELATIONSHIPS. HOWEVER, MANY MORE PEOPLE HAVE LEFT SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY GOT TIRED OF WAITING THEY GOT DISAPPOINTED. THE HOPE BECAME HYPE AND BE WERE LET DOWN. PROMISES WERE MADE ABOUT WHAT GOD WAS GOING TO DO BUT THEY DID NTO COME TURE. I AM GOING TO SAY SOMETHING HARD HERE BUT BEAR WITH ME. IF YOU DO NOT COME TO A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THE BIBLICAL HOPE IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT, YOU TOO MAY SUFFER DISAPPOINTMENT AND IT MAY ROCK YOUR FAITH! THIS IS WHERE i HAVE BEEN AT FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS AS WE HAVE GONE THROUGH ANOTHER MAJOR TRANSITION IN OUR CHURCH’S HISTORY. THIS IS WHY I AM SPEAKING TO YOU ON HOPE. UNLESS YOU REALLY GRASP THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF HOPE YOU WILL STRUGGLE WITH DISAPPOINTMENT WITH GOD and WITH CHURCH EVEN TO THE POINT YOU WILL FIND YOURSLEF DIS APPOINTED FROM YOUR PLACE HERE.
NOTES: Say some Hard Things. Please understand that what I am going to say is not directed at any one particular individual or leader. It is a perspective! I think we are caught in a CULTURE OF HYPE! We have raised people’s expectations with the Hype! We have made promises and not delivered on them! So Lets talk about it as a family Instead of people getting disappointed and voting with their feet! Okay?
This is the reason we don’t season may of our early people here. Their hopes for a future with us died from disappointment. e.g. Story by victor Frankl disappointment is not about hope letting us down but is a sign that we do not understand the plot of the story we are living in. Just as the prisoner at the camp through his dream indicated that he would be free so we thought a prophesy or a word or a sign or manifestations indicated we were headed in that direction and it was for naught so we get disappointed. Even this building was for us a sign of God’s great work in the future. When we are in Disappointment it means we don’t understand the story SO WE NEED JESUS TO COME ALONG SIDE OF US AND RE EXPLAIN THE STORY TO US. WE ARE DISAPPOINTED BECAUSE WE DON’T UNDERSTAND THE STORY ! - It is really only when you suffer deep disappointment that you begin to learn of hope, true hope as Jeremiah did in Lamentations
Read along with me…
Read along with me…
Read along with me…
He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. The Road to Emmaus is a story that invites us to bring our disappointments to Jesus. He knows the end from the Beginning When we are in Disappointment it means we don’t understand the story
Famous 17 th Century Painting depicting the revelation of Christ at the table as he broke bread. See the surprise BUT There were TWO disciples not THREE Scholars believe that the TWO were a husband & wife = CLOPAS & his wife MARY who lived in Emmaus The phrase “And their eyes were opened” is an allusion to the Genesis story where Adam & Eve had their eyes opened when they at the fruit, knowing good and evil! It is Luke’s way of saying that “Here is the new humanity” This is the climax of the human project. Jesus Risen from the dead!
WHAT IS CHRISTIAN HYPE? WHAT IS CHRISTIAN HOPE? HOW DO WE KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?
Tell my story of Failure in the Life of Jesus Course he glory of the gospel is that the Creator of the universe entered history, taking on human flesh and embracing pain, heartache, weakness, suffering and death. (Philippians 2:3-9) Far from floating over the difficulties of human life, Jesus embraced them and in doing so, dignified them. Therefore, though we fail, we know that God values us and affirms our humanness, weak and vulnerable as it is. For the Jesus we are to be like is thoroughly human and our challenge is to follow him in his demonstration of true humanity not in a theologically constructed divinity. What a relief it is to know that the measure of our Christ likeness is not in a demonstration of divine attributes, but in an embrace of our humanity for the sake of others. This is why we can celebrate missing the theologically constructed mark of a super hero Jesus. This is not what we are meant for. We are meant to glorify God in our humanness, representing Him to His world.
NOTES: This is so for Jesus AND It is so for us Paul introduces this passage with the words… Let your attitude be that of Christ! 1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7but made himself nothing, taking the very nature[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! 9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, 10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
NOTES: This is so for Jesus AND It is so for us! How do we endure?
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Jesus tells the story differently! So disappointment makes sense because we are never meant to live the Christian life devoid of disappointment or suffering.
Read along with me …
Read along with me …
Read along with me …
NOTES: Imagine riding this up a hill? How about over rocky terrain? It all depends on one wheel.
Hope is, in the New Testament, a very strong word. It does not denote (as it does in contemporary English) merely a strong desire for something which may or may not happen in the future. It is rather an unshakeable assurance about what the future holds. It is the anchor of the soul, firmly secured in that which is beyond our sight but which is the real future. It therefore furnishes us with the criteria for determining all action in the immediate present. This absolute confidence about the future is grounded in the fact that Jesus, the living word of God present as a man in the midst of our human history, who had been rejected, humiliated, condemned to the death of an enemy of God, dead, buried and sealed in the tomb, had been raised from the dead victorious over all the powers of death and hell. That fact, that finished work which is now part of history and therefore irreversible, is the pledge that, beyond all the temporary victories of evil, the ultimate future belongs to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that fact must determine all our thinking and planning and doing in the passing present. All thinking and planning and doing which supposes another future for the human race is folly.
Hope is, in the New Testament, a very strong word. It does not denote (as it does in contemporary English) merely a strong desire for something which may or may not happen in the future. It is rather an unshakeable assurance about what the future holds. It is the anchor of the soul, firmly secured in that which is beyond our sight but which is the real future. It therefore furnishes us with the criteria for determining all action in the immediate present. This absolute confidence about the future is grounded in the fact that Jesus, the living word of God present as a man in the midst of our human history, who had been rejected, humiliated, condemned to the death of an enemy of God, dead, buried and sealed in the tomb, had been raised from the dead victorious over all the powers of death and hell. That fact, that finished work which is now part of history and therefore irreversible, is the pledge that, beyond all the temporary victories of evil, the ultimate future belongs to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that fact must determine all our thinking and planning and doing in the passing present. All thinking and planning and doing which supposes another future for the human race is folly.