FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE
HOPE
PALM SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
1 PETER 1:13-21
MARCH 24, 2013
On May 13, 1939, Adolf Hitler and the German Nazi government placed 937 Jewish refugees aboard a ship called the SS St. Louis, bound for Cuba. These 937 Jewish refugees were filled with hope. Hope of escape. Hope of freedom. Hope of a new world, a new land, and a new life. These Jewish refugees were relatively wealthy. These men, women, and their children had paid money to Adolf Hitler and to the Nazi government to buy their freedom. It was promised to them that aboard this ship they would be taken to new life in a new world. They would be taken to Cuba. They were filled with hope. They did not know that Adolf Hitler had prearranged for them to be refused entrance into the harbor at Cuba. They would be denied entry and they would never step foot on that new land. Adolf Hitler had prearranged that. Indeed, when they arrived in Cuba, they were denied access. Their hopes, those great hopes of escape were just dashed. In desperation, the ship turned to the United States of America, sought entrance into this country.
For a multiplicity of reasons, they were denied. Then Captain Schroder turned the SS St. Louis around. As Hitler had planned, he returned the Jews to Germany. Some of the Jews on that ship committed suicide. Others on that ship attempted mutiny and they failed. The Jews that survived arrived back in Germany where they were thrown into concentration camps, thrown into gas chambers, and into Nazi ovens. This was a sad chapter in human history. Hollywood has made that event from history into a movie called the Voyage of the Damned. There are people all over this world for whom life kind of feels like that: a voyage that is cursed, a voyage of the damned. There are millions of people all over this world who go through life and experience rejection, they experience failure, they experience suffering, tragic disease, and death. In many parts of the world there are people who live in abject poverty, people who don’t have a lot of hope.
This is Palm Sunday. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, came into the Holy City on Palm Sunday. The crowds lined that Palm Sunday Road going down the Mount of Olives into the Holy City. Many of them had little hope. Indeed, many of the Jews had little hope. They had centuries multi-generational oppression. The Jewish people longed to be set free. They had been a vassal state of many other empires. They had endured the shackles of many other governments. The Jewish people had been under the oppression of the Assyrian Empire, then under the Babylonian Empire, then under the Medo-Persian Empire, then under the Greek Empire, then under the Seleucid Empire, and then finally even on Palm Sunday as Jesus came down that road, the Jewish people felt oppressed by the Roman Empire. They were saying, “Enough.”
Many had been filled with despair, but they heard of this man, Jesus. They heard he was the Christ. They heard he was the Messiah, that he was the Anointed One. They heard that he had performed miracles, and that he had the power that only comes from God and manifests God. They were shouting, “Hosanna!” That word comes from a root word which means “save now,” save us now. Hosanna, save us now. Blessed is the King. Blessed is the Messiah. Blessed is the Christ. Yet, they did not know, they did not understand what Jesus had come to Jerusalem to do that week. They did not understand that Jesus loves everybody. They didn’t understand that Jesus loves not only the Jews, but even loves the Romans. Jesus loves everybody in the world and he had come into Jerusalem that day that he might die for the sin of the world, that he might take the sin of the world upon himself, that he might conquer death himself, and he might conquer death itself. They did not understand the scope of the hope that he was providing as he came into Jerusalem that day.
As we look at hope, what I would like to do is give you a little prescription from the Bible, a prescription of hope. This prescription is three-fold, so I have three teachings. The first teaching is this: set your hope. Set your hope on Christ. Set your hope on him. We see this in our passage of scripture for today, 1 Peter 1:15. “Set your hope fully on the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” That is what it is all about. Set your hope there. Set it on Christ. My will, my wish, my desire for you is that you might have so much hope that when people see you it would seem like the sun is shining on you, that you would radiate God’s light, that they would see his joy, and that every day you would have this amazing hope. That is only possible if you set your hope on Christ and on Christ supremely.
There are many old nursery rhymes, but this is one of the oldest. “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” My guess is, you have all said that. I know that in elementary schools, preschools, and nursery schools, not only in this country, but all over the world, that old nursery rhyme is repeated again and again. When I grew up and I went to Montrose Elementary School in Montrose, California, we recited that nursery rhyme. We had no clue what it meant, but we would go out onto the playground, we would hold hands and circle around, “Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” Then we would go down. It was fun, we would laugh, and we had no clue what it meant. Maybe that is true of you too.
Historians tell us that this old nursery rhyme has a surprising and very ancient source. This nursery rhyme comes from the Middle Ages, during the time of Bubonic Plague, the Black Death. The plague swept over Europe and 25 million people died. In the Middle Ages there was no modern medicine. Medicine was much more primitive. People thought that the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, was caused by polluted air. They thought if they took ashes, if they snuffed ashes, if they inhaled ashes, it would induce sneezing. By inducing sneezing, it would get polluted air out of their lungs, out of their bodies. They took ashes to induce sneezing to remove polluted air from their bodies. They thought they could purify the air through roses and gardens. They would literally hold hands and walk around gardens hoping that the fragrance would bring purified air. They would take rose petals (called posies) and put them in their pockets, thinking they could purify the air wherever they were. In the end, they all fell down. 25 million fell down. All people in every generation set their hopes on different things. Some people have set their hopes on rosies and posies.
Today we are far more modern, far more sophisticated, far more educated, and far more enlightened. Or so we say. If you have a medical problem, you are not going to set your hope on rosies and posies, you are going to set your hopes on a doctor, you are going to set your hopes on medicine. I understand that. I love medicine. I deeply, deeply value the medical profession. I deeply value doctors and physicians. Our son Drew is a doctor, a surgeon. We thank God that he has chosen to help people in that way. Our son-in-law, Chris, is a clinical pharmacist. Both our son and our son-in-law got their doctorates at CU. We are proud of them. We are grateful for the whole field of medicine. I am a Christian. My son Drew is a Christian. My son-in-law Chris is a Christian. We are all Christians. We believe there is a higher power. We believe there is a greater hope. Even in the field of medicine, no matter what we have, we look to Christ. We pray in his name. We seek his healing power. We pray for God to bless the doctors, to work through the doctors, and even go beyond what the doctors can do.
Think about other things in your life. Think about thinks with greater importance. Think about things that relate to a purpose in living, a purpose in life. Think about things that relate to guilt, to your past, to forgiveness of sins. Where do you set your hope? Think about the possibility of never-ending life. Think about the possibility of life beyond this life. Think about heaven. Think about eternal life. Where do you set your hope? The Bible says, “Set your hope on Christ.” Set your hope on his grace, the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That same passage, our passage of scripture for today, mentions obedience and how we are called to obedience. It doesn’t say, “Set your hope on obedience.” Set your hope on grace, the grace of Christ. We are called to obedience, but our hope is in his grace. So, don’t set your hope on good works. We live in a world where many of the world’s religions teach that your hope is good works. Your good karma must be greater than your bad karma. There is a lot of emphasis on obedience and works. God does want obedience and God does want good works, but our hope is the grace of Christ. This is the first part of the prescription: Set your hope on the grace of Christ.
There is a second part of the prescription. Seize your hope. Don’t just set your hope. The Bible says you must seize your hope. In Hebrews chapter 6, we are told that Abraham seized his hope. We are told that we need to seize our hope. If you begin with verse 10, you get the context.
“For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely I will bless you and multiply you.’ And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, received the promises. Men indeed swear by a greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So, when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he interposed with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, the promise, and the oath, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner sanctuary beyond the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”
That passage in Hebrews 6 is complex. It is a little bit difficult to understand when you first read it. You understand, contextually, that it has to do with what happened in the Jewish world, and how the Jewish people set their hope on the priestly system, and on a sacrificial system. On Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, beyond the curtain, into the inner sanctuary, into the presence of God. There in the Holy of Holies the high priest would sprinkle the blood of animals on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant seeking to atone for all the sin of the people.
This passage in Hebrews is just saying, “Hey, that was just a foreshadowing of what is to come. It was a small indicator of the reality of the heavenly Holy of Holies where God truly dwells.” Into that heavenly Holy of Holies Jesus has gone on our behalf, representing us, offering his own blood for our sin. God has promised, God has taken an oath that he will accept it. Our sins can be forgiven, therefore seize the hope. As assuredly as Abraham seized the hope, we must seize our hope. When God gave a promise to Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation, that he would become a blessing to generations of people, Abraham had to seize that hope. He couldn’t just stay in Ur of the Chaldees, he couldn’t just remain in Haran, he had to go forth. He had to make a commitment of his life.
How do we seize the hope? It is through the gospel. If you are going to set your hope on Christ, you must seize that hope by embracing the gospel. You have to take action. You have to take a step of faith. You have got to make a commitment. Have you done that? Have you committed your life? Have you left Ur of the Chaldees? Have you left Haran? Are you bound for the Promised Land? Have you seized the hope set before you? Have you responded to the gospel? Have you made that commitment: “Yes, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me. I am a sinner. Save me. Thank you for dying for my sins. Wash me whiter than snow. Be my Savior.” Have you made that commitment? Have you placed your trust in him? Have you embraced the risen Lord? Have you embraced the King of Kings? Have you said, “Come, Lord Jesus, sit on the throne of my life. From this day forth I will seek to follow you. I am a sinner and I am flawed, but from this day forth I will seek to live for you. Be my Lord and be my Savior.”
That is how you seize your hope. You make that commitment. I did that when I was five. I seized my hope 62 years ago. There is a sense in which you do it every day. There is a sense in which every day you re-up that commitment to trust him and follow him. If you set and seize, you are not going to live right. You are not going to have that joy. You are not going to have that peace. You are not going to have that blessed hope flowing out of you unless you do these things.
Finally, this prescription tells us we must share our hope. You have got to set your hope, seize your hope, and share your hope. Isn’t it cool the way the Bible is into alliterations? Set. Seize. Share. As we look to share our hope, look at 1 Peter chapter 3, and one of my favorite verses, I Peter 3:15 Always be ready to make a defense to anyone, anyone in the world, who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. You have to set your hope on Christ, seize it in the gospel and then share it with the world. Always be ready to make a defense to anyone in the world who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. It is a beautiful passage.
The word for hope is “elpis,” and that word means confident expectation. Is that what people see when they look at you? Do they see confident expectation? If you have a disease, if you have cancer, do they see confident expectation of blessing? If you are in financial trouble, you are out of work, do they see hope? Do they see confident expectations of blessings? If you are in the midst of some relational pain and you have lost somebody, maybe through rejection, maybe through death, in the midst of the grief do they see any confident expectation of blessing? Do they see anything that is supernatural, out of the ordinary? When they look at you do they see the light of God? That is hope.
What Peter is saying in 1 Peter 3:15 is that if you really love Christ, you are going to be filled with hope. If you have set your hope on him and seized that hope through the gospel, if you are re-upping every day, people are going to see that confident expectation of blessing in you. They are going to see it regularly. People are going to come up and say, “What is going on? What is this about? Give me an account. Explain this to me. Why do you have hope?”
You should always be ready to make a defense. The word for defense in the Greek is “apologia.” We get an English word from that—”apology.” That is unfortunate because our English word apology, which comes from the Greek word apologia, means a very different thing. Peter is not saying, “Always be ready to apologize for your hope.” It is not what he is saying at all. The original meaning of apologia is a defense. It comes from “apo,” which means from, and “logia,” from which we get the English word logic. People come up and say, “Why do you have this confident expectation of blessing? Why do you always seem to have hope?” You are supposed to be able to explain that reasonably to people. It is not enough to say, “I don’t know, I just feel that way.” It is not enough to say, “I don’t know, something just happened.” You have got to think this through. We can’t be lazy.
The church of Christ in many generations has just been lazy. The whole reason we have established the Institute of Evangelism and Apologetics here at Cherry Hills Community Church, and are so blessed to have Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg, is that we have to be able to defend the faith reasonably. It is good to tell your story. That is powerful. Explain how your heart melted when you heard about Christ. Explain how you felt such a washing and such a cleansing when he forgave you. Tell your story, but also be ready to explain why you think the Bible is true. Be ready to explain why you really believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Be ready to explain why you believe the claims of Christ. Be ready to speak reasonably about these things. That is what Peter is saying, “As you go into the world, set your hope on Christ, seize it in the gospel and share it with the world reasonably.” Christianity is not anti-intellectual; it is natural and it is supernatural. We are in the imago def; we are in the likeness of God. He has given us minds and brains and expects us to use them. Be ready. Set your hope, seize your hope, and share your hope.
I have been blessed in my life. I have had many wonderful examples of people who set their hope on Christ, grabbed hold of the gospel, and have gone into the world sharing Jesus. I have had many examples. My mom and dad were examples. Many people at Hollywood Presbyterian Church and Glendale Presbyterian Church were examples for me. My first opportunity in the ministry was not here; I have been here for 31 years. I thank God for every year. My first 8-1/2 years in the ministry were at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora. That is where I began. I had many examples there. I was so blessed to serve there with two men: Dean Wolf and Mark Moore. Dean Wolf was my boss. He was the senior pastor. Mark Moore was the associate pastor. I became yet another associate pastor. In the early years it was just the three of us. What an example Dean and Mark were to me. I thank God for their friendship even to this day. Mark is almost 90 years old and lives in Aurora. Dean is 88 and lives in Rancho Bernardo, California. These are precious people.
Dean loved to tell people about Jesus, almost to a flaw he loved to tell people about Jesus. His philosophy of performing marriage ceremonies and what kind of process should be required by church in order to provide weddings was controversial. He said to me, and to Mark, “When people want to get married here, you marry them.” That is kind of his approach to marriage. It was, “Oh yeah, there might be some really weird circumstances where you might need to say no. But for the most part, when they want to get married here, you marry them.”
We responded with, “What if they are not Christians?” “Even if they are not Christians. They are going to get married; they are going to go somewhere; somebody is going to do it. I want you to tell them about Jesus. I want you to require at least four pre-marital sessions and I want you to tell them about Jesus.” We did weddings. We did a lot of weddings. In my 8-1/2 years at Faith Presbyterian in Aurora, I did 350 weddings—almost one wedding a week. There were a couple of weeks when I did eight weddings in a single week. That is kind of a wedding mill.
Yet, the number of weddings I did was fewer than what Mark did and what Dean did. There were an unbelievable number of weddings in various venues at the church and outside the church. Incredibly, countless people came to Christ. Let me give you a little qualifier and disclaimer: We do have a grid here. We require that people not only go through premarital counseling, but we are a little stricter in whom we will marry and we want Christians to marry Christians. We have tougher standards here. I love Dean’s heart for evangelism. I saw it all the time in so many ways. I remember on one occasion we were coming back from lunch. Dean and I drove into the church parking lot over in Aurora. We had just had a good meal. Dean loved good meals, not that I don’t. We pulled into the church parking lot and saw all of these people dressed in wonderful clothes. There was obviously a bride in her bridal gown, bridesmaids, and groomsmen in tuxedos. Dean turns to me and says, “Brother, I guess Mark must be doing a wedding.” I said, “Mark is in Africa.” Dean turned to me and said, “Brother, are you doing this wedding?” I said, “Dean, this is not my wedding. I am not doing it.”
I see the wheels beginning to turn. Dean takes out his little calendar book (this is back when people had little books). He goes through his little calendar book and he said, “Oh my goodness. It is my wedding.” He was just dropping me off at the church and he was going to go on. By the grace of God, he got out of the car.
I run into people all the time who accepted Christ through Dean. There are so many of you. I have had so many of you say, “I have accepted Christ through Dean Wolf because he loved to see people fall in love with Jesus.” Yet, the real evangelist on our team at Faith Presbyterian in Aurora was Mark Moore. Mark was the real evangelist. He just had the gift of evangelism. He could share his hope. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit with power from heaven to share that hope. It was unbelievable.
I remember on one occasion when Mark was counseling somebody in his office and he sensed that they were not a believer yet. He almost always shared Christ with them and gave them a chance to respond to the gospel. Mark loved to use the Four Spiritual Laws, which was little booklet distributed by Campus Crusade for Christ. We couldn’t supply Mark with enough of them. He had boxes and boxes of them. We kept having to order more boxes because he would go through them so often. He would share the Four Spiritual Laws, which explained how to find a bridge to Christ, how to find salvation, eternal life, and forgiveness of sins. Mark used those booklets all the time.
On this occasion when he was doing this counseling session, he sensed he needed to talk to the person about salvation. He gave this guy a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws and he kept one for himself. He said, “Let’s go through this together,” as they would turn the pages to see the plan of the gospel. This guy began to irritate Mark. He was getting rude and a little angry. He says, “I don’t buy this stuff.”
Finally, he took a copy of the little book and threw it against the wall. You have to understand, Mark loved these little books. They were precious tools, like gifts from God. Here this guy, just in his moment of rejection, actually took the book and threw it against the wall. It was like throwing the Bible against the wall. Mark just lost it. Right there in his counseling appointment he jumped the guy and got him in a headlock and tried to force him to apologize. It turned out, because Mark has a heart of gold, Mark wound up apologizing himself. God used this. The guy accepted Christ.
When Mark had been in the ministry for many, many years, his family wanted to give him a surprise. His daughters, Linda, Debbie, and Cindy, and his wife Nancy, blindfolded him one night at home and said, “We are going to go out on a surprise night.” They blindfolded him and put him in the car. They drove him over to the church. They led him into the worship center. The worship center held about 1500 people, a little smaller than here, but big. We had packed the place. Mark was led out onto the stage and we are all totally silent. He was led out onto the stage, he was speaking, and you can hear his voice echoing. Finally, they took off the blindfold and he saw all of us and he started to cry. He was so excited. Then they asked for everyone who had accepted Jesus Christ through Mark’s ministry to stand. It was like the whole place stood up. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that what it is about? Isn’t it about saving souls? Isn’t it still about Jesus saves? Isn’t it still about the gospel of Jesus Christ? If you want hope, set your hope on Christ, seize it in the gospel, and share it. Have the joy. None of us are Mark Moores, but when we get to heaven there ought to be somebody who can say, “Hey, they loved me enough to tell me about Jesus.” There is hope, not just for you, but hope for the world. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.