What is Biblical Hope?
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I just wanna, I wanna start with reading some scripture this morning. And we'll get in. We're gonna look at the Book of Ezekiel, and Ezekiel was a prophet of God, and this, this account we're gonna read this morning, it's God was leading Ezekiel in a vision and gave him a message, and so I wanted to just to sh- to read that this morning, and we're gonna just speak for a few moments out of this one. Does that sound like a plan? Sounds good. Sounds good? All righty. So it's the Book of Ezekiel 37
Gotta get the light here. There we go. I don't want to listen- I'm tromboning. You know when your eye...
Okay. The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley. It was a valley full of bones He took me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. And he asked me, "Son of man, can these bones live?"
I said, "O Sovereign Lord, you alone know." Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you. You will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.
I'll put breath in you and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.'" So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. And I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them, and the skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
He said to me, "Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man, and say to it that this is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.'" So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them, and they came to life, and they stood to their feet, a vast army.
I don't know about you, but that is Hollywood type of stuff. I could imagine that being like a scene out of something like Lord of the Rings or
a vast army. I wanna take the next few moments this morning to talk about something that every one of us needs. Every one of us needs, but we do so easily dismiss it. And it is hope. Hope. Now, hope is an interesting word. Often we mistaken it. Often it gets mistaken for wishful thinking, doesn't it? Because we use that word hope in everything, daily language that we say.
We say things like, "Oh, I hope this works out," or, "I hope this meeting goes well," or, "I hope I get a park at the shops." Christmas time. "I hope that girl's at the party," or, "I hope that guy's at the party." Around this time of year, "I hope my team wins." And then there's the real classic, "Man, I really hope I don't get in trouble for this."
When I was a, when I was a kid, I've, I got a, I've got a brother who's about five years older than me, and he would... We would get into all sort of mischief. Mischief. We were a couple of scallywags. That's a real old... We see, we got into... actually, it was more my brother would get into trouble.
And I was just the young, naive little kid that would go get sucked into it all, and we nearly burnt the house down. We nearly killed the dog. Amongst other things, we did... Lots of things happened. But I remember this one time, my dad was working on our family car. It was an old FC Holden, one of the big old cars they used to make out of metal, you know, one of those ones.
And he was out the front. He had it parked out the front, and he was working on the exhaust pipe, and he'd taken the muffler off the car. And he started it up, and this thing, it sounded like a V8 Supercar. Rar. If you've ever experienced having the muffler off, yeah. It's loud as. And so then he went inside, and my brother, he goes, "Simon, come on.
Check this out." So he grabbed the keys, and we went out, and he got in the car, and he started it up. Rar rar. And I was like, "Whoa, it's so loud." And he said, "Get in. Let's go for a drive." He was, like, 11. He was 11 years old, my brother. So he didn't know how to drive, so the thing didn't get out of first gear.
So we're going... We went around the block, and it's rar, and it's screaming all the way around the block. Now, I come from a big family. I've think I've shared this before. I've got four sisters, three brothers, mum and dad, so there's 10 of us in the house. And I know that's true, because that's how many people were standing on the footpath-
when my brother and I came roaring around the corner- ... in our car. Wow. And I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "Oh, man. I hope- ... I hope we don't get in trouble for this."
I can stand here today and tell you all that was definitely wishful thinking. 'Cause it did not go well. But what we need to realize is that hope is not wishful thinking. The what, the language that we use when we speak of hope, it's much more. I believe hope is a spiritual decision that we can make every single day of our lives.
There are moments in life when hope feels easy, doesn't it? Feels easy. There are seasons when the bills are paid, yeah, the family's well, the future looks bright, the doors are opening, and we can look around and say, God is good. God is good." But then there are other seasons. There are seasons when you wake up and you don't know how things are gonna change.
Seasons when you've prayed that same prayer over and over, to the point where you almost don't expect an answer anymore. Seasons when something that once had life in it now feels completely dead. A marriage that had joy and now it just feels empty. A dream that once burned so, so hard in your heart, but now it feels buried.
Or a family relationship that used to be so close, but now it just feels fractured There are seasons where it feels like our hope is running out. And that's why I feel, and I believe God highlighted to me that Ezekiel chapter 37 speaks powerfully to us about this. Because God takes Ezekiel into a valley.
Into a valley. A valley full of dry bones. Ezekiel looks around and he sees evidence that something once lived there. Something once lived there. Bones mean that there were bodies, and bodies means that there were people, and so then people means that there was once dreams, and there was families, and there was relationships and laughter and life.
But now there's nothing but bones there. And the Bible says something very important, I believe. It says they were very dry bones. So this wasn't something that had just recently died. This was something that had been dead for a while. Wasn't something that had just died yesterday. Something that... Wasn't something that needed just, you know, just a little bit of encouragement
This is what, it wasn't something that was almost alive. It was, it looked beyond recovery. It's gone. It's done. And God asks Ezekiel a very strange yet pointed question. What does He ask him? He says, "Son of man, can these bones live, do you think?" Do you think these bones could live?
And Ezekiel gives the wisest answer possible. Husbands can learn from this. The wisest answer possible. He says, "Oh, Sovereign Lord, you alone know." Over to you. Yeah. Yeah. Don't laugh, guys. Don't laugh.
"Sovereign Lord, you alone know." Now, it's important that we understand Ezekiel didn't pretend at that point. He didn't say, "Oh, yeah, of course I can. God, yeah, I've got this. Oh yeah. Definitely." He didn't. Ezekiel didn't say that. He said, "God I don't know." He probably even shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. I don't know if these bones can live. But you know what? I believe that god, And sometimes that is all the faith that we need. All the faith you need is to say, "God, I don't know. I don't know how this is gonna end. I don't know where this is going, but God, and you put your faith and your trust in God, in the sovereign God. So God said to Ezekiel, "Prophesy to the bones. Prophesy. Speak to what looks dead. Speak to what looks impossible." Ezekiel obeyed. He did what God told him to do, and then something amazing happened. The bones started coming together, and there was a loud noi- It would've been loud.
Cr. All the bones crunching together and all coming together, and then muscles and tissues and sinew and tendons and then skin came over. It looked, oh, mate, it would've been like the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. That one. It would've been, oh, mate, I wouldn't have been able to look.
But there was still something missing. There was something missing. They looked like bodies, but they had no breath. They still had no life in them. And then God tells Ezekiel, "Prophesy. Prophesy to the breath." And the breath of God enters them, and they stand on their feet, a vast army Ezekiel did what God told him to do Something that looked like the end then became the beginning.
Something that looked hopeless becomes a testimony. And I believe that story, that account in Ezekiel highlights to us the importance and the value of hope. Hope
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But God meets us in the valleys. He meets you in the valley. The mountains represent victory, mountaintops re-represent victory, but the valley represents the process that you go through to get to the victory
And sometimes we ask, "God, why am I in this valley? Why am I in this valley?" We've got some water baptisms happening today, and I've read the testimony of one of the young guys, awesome young guy that's being baptized. And in that testimony, he shares about how he asked that question, "God, why am I in this valley?"
But perhaps the better question to ask is, "God, what can you do in this valley?" What can you do? An even more powerful question is not so much, "God, what can you do for me in this valley?" But, "What can you do for other people in this valley?" Oh, that's when it gets really tight and breathing gets a bit hard, when you even take the focus off yourself and put it to someone else.
Because the presence of a valley doesn't mean the absence of God. It's actually the opposite. God was already in the valley when we read that account. Ezekiel didn't find God once he'd got through the valley. God was already there. God was already there And, I really believe that someone needs to hear that this morning.
That God is with you in the valley. Your valley's not proof that God's abandoned you. Your valley actually becomes the place where you discover God in a deeper way. We often think God is most present when everything is going well. When everything's good, then me and God, we're like this, and we feel like God's really with us and... But some of the deepest encounters with God happen when everything feels like it's falling apart. And hope begins when we stop measuring God's presence by our circumstances. Hope begins when we stop measuring God's presence by our circumstances, because our circumstances will change every single day.
We know that. We're all grown-ups. Circumstances change, but God doesn't. Amen. God never changes. The scripture tells us that He is the same yesterday, back in the days with Ezekiel and the prophets, and He is the same today. He's sitting right next to you right now, and He will be the same tomorrow and forever.
He does not change. He is a constant. He is the one constant in life that you can always rely on
So where does our hope begin? Where does it begin? We talk about... at church here, we talk about building a community and being disciples that, that make disciples. So we talk about sharing our faith. We talk about sharing our faith, right? If we're not sharing our faith or trying to share our faith, then what are we doing here?
So we've got to talk about where our hope begins. Because if we can understand that, and sometimes we need to be reminded of it, every... I need to be reminded of it every day, where does my hope begin? Then if we grasp that, then we can easily pass it on to someone else, share it with someone else, even just with a brief encounter, even with just a simple sentence or a simple conversation.
Where does our hope begin? We're gonna go from Ezekiel to the Gospel of John. Gospel of John, we're gonna look at a very famous scripture. Everyone in the church knows it, and a lot of the people outside of the church know it even. They've heard it. People hold it up at football games and on posters and things like that, and it's John three sixteen.
John three sixteen: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. If you want to know where Christian hope begins, it begins right there. God loves you. God loves you I just get a sense, I get a real feeling that there's someone that needs to hear just that simple word.
God loves you. God loves you. Not because you've got everything together. Man, who's got that? Not because you've earned it God just loves you. He just, He loves you. God loves you. There's nothing you can do about it, I'm afraid. God loves you. Yeah, we talk about being irresistible. Guess what? We are already irresistible.
You are already irresistible to God. He loves you. For God so loved the world. That means God's love is bigger than your valley. It's bigger than what you're going through. It's bigger than the struggle you're having with your family or with your work colleague or with your neighbor
And God's response to a broken world wasn't simply just to send advice. "You know what? This is what you all need to do." He didn't send us a list to tick off God sent his one and only son. He literally bankrupt heaven and sent his one and only son. That's the gospel. God didn't stand at a distance and shout, things at our pain, didn't shout instructions at us.
He actually came to us. Jesus entered our world. Jesus entered death on a cross, and ultimately, Jesus walked out of the grave in resurrection life. Jesus defeated death. He took our death That's where our hope begins. God loves you. He loves you so much that He did that for us So Christian hope has a name.
We use the word hope, but it actually has a name, and its name is Jesus. His name is Jesus we sing songs, so many songs about it. We sing songs and we say, and the words, and Jesus' name is in those songs, and we sing those songs But I don't know about you, but how often do we say the word, the name Jesus in our daily lives?
I'm guilty of not saying it all the time. Sometimes even forgetting it. Oh, man, yeah, Jesus, that's right. Our Christian hope has a name. His name is Jesus. If your hope is based on your health, then what happens when your body gets weak? If your hope is based on your career, what happens when that job ends?
If your hope's based on another person, what happens when they disappoint you?
If your hope is in Jesus, then the storms can come, the valleys can come, loss can come, struggles can come, challenges can come, change can come But you can still say, "It is well with my soul. It is well with my soul."
Not because everything is well, but because Jesus is still Lord. Jesus is Lord
That's the message of the gospel, and that's the message that we need to own every single day of our lives, and we need to share it with people. We need to share it with your family and your friends and your neighbors and your work colleagues That's the hope. That is, Jesus is the hope of the world.
And it's like we've got a cure for chronic disease, and if we hold onto it and don't share it with anyone, then what good are we? And church, I'm putting my hand up for this as well. I'm just as lazy, if you like, or just as scared to share it or talk about it. But we've got to pick our moments and we've got to do it.
It's the hope of the world
John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not die, but will have eternal life." That's an interesting scripture. That is an interesting scripture to share with someone for the first time, someone who's not a believer. I've had experience with this, talking about it, and they'll say, "Oh, yeah," and you pull out John 3:16.
John 3:16, this is what it's all about, mate. And they're like, "Oh, all right so eternal life, so you're talking about heaven?" It's like yeah, you get eternal life. Yeah, you believe in Jesus. Yeah, believe that He died, and you give your heart to Him, and then you get eternal life." And they're like, "Oh after we die, we go to heaven?"
I'm like yeah, it's great." And they're like so we gotta die to get it, to get the good stuff?" I was like, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right. This all happens after we die." And then the interesting thing is we spend most of our time and our resource and our efforts trying not to die, don't we?
You get sick, you go to the doctor, have some medicine. You go to somewhere dangerous, you tread lightly, you put on some protective gear. If you're gonna ride a motorbike, you put a helmet on. That'll save me.
And we look at that and go yeah, you're right." But what's interesting is I believe when we read further, we go to John chapter 10, verse 10, Jesus has a different sight of it, if you like. Jesus doesn't want us just to survive. He doesn't want us just to hang in there till heaven. I believe Jesus wants the eternal life that he talks about.
He wants it for right here and now as well. John 10:10, Jesus says, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. But I have come that you may have life and have it to the full." Who's up for that? I'm up for a bit of life to the full, please.
Notice what Jesus says. He doesn't say, "I've come that you might merely survive. I've come that you might, just hang in there till heaven, because it's all gonna be great." Don't get me wrong, I... heaven's gonna be amazing. I believe it. Heaven's gonna be incredible. We're gonna be there with the saints, and be there with Jesus and all the angels and we're gonna spend probably the first 100,000 years just going, "Whoa."
And then we move on to the next chapter, it's just gonna be amazing. But if we've gotta just hang in there till heaven, it can be tiring. So Jesus says, "No. Look, I've come for the here and now as well. I've come that you might have life and have it to the full." Remember, Jesus is our hope, and hope is something that gives us strength.
Hope is something that ke- keeps us going. Hope is something that gives us the joy. "I've come that you might have life and have it to the full." Not just life, but life to the full. So Jesus contrasts the two kingdoms. He says there's a, the evil kingdom, okay? The, the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy.
Now the enemy, we all have the enemy. His name's Satan, okay? And he hates everything that God loves, so he's gonna try and pull it down. He's gonna try and destroy it. He wants to convince you that your current season is your permanent condition. He's gonna say God's let you down. That's it.
You're stuck in this for now. That's it. It's not gonna change." The enemy says, "You're finished." But Jesus says, "No, I've come to give you life. This is gonna change. You're gonna have life." The enemy says, "There's no future." But Jesus says, "I make all things new." Yeah. The enemy says, "You're defined by what happens to you."
But Jesus says, "No, I'm the resurrection and the life. I've taken that death away. You can live in newness." The enemy points to the valley and says, "Oh, look, there are the bones. They're mine. It's done." But Jesus points past the valley and says no. Look over there. There's something beyond this." So what action...
Here we go. Let's land it. What action are we gonna take? What action do we take Sometimes God's, sometimes God asks us to speak before we can see. Now you read in that, in Ezekiel, God asked him to do something. And the scripture there read, he said, "So Ezekiel did as God had commanded him to do."
Ezekiel obeyed. He did what God asked him to do God says, "Ezekiel, prophesy to these bones." Prophesy. Imagine how crazy that would have felt prophesying to a pile of bones
Because obedience often comes before evidence. You pray before you see the answer. You forgive before you see reconciliation. You serve before you see fruit. You worship before circumstances change. You give before you see provision, and that is hope. Looking beyond what's here and looking at what can be.
I will obey God even if I... E- even before I see the outcome. I will obey God. I will not stop obeying God. I love the story. I put this in here. I thought we'll just... we'll squeeze it in real quick. I love this, I love the story about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The three young guys living in the land. King Nebuchadnezzar, crazy king, built a big statue and said, "Everyone's gotta bow down to this statue of me and worship me."
And these three young guys, they loved God, and they said, "Nope, we're not doing that. You're not our God. We only worship our God." And he said no, you've got to. If anyone who doesn't bow down is gonna be thrown into a fiery furnace, and you'll be burnt to smithereens." And the three young guys, just young teenagers, they said, "No, we're not doing that."
So he said, "All right. You're gonna be thrown in the fire." And they said so be it." They said, "So be it. We know that God can rescue us from the fire." And this is the powerful part. They said, "But even if he doesn't, we'll still pe- keep believing in him." Yeah. "We'll still have trust in him. We'll still have our hope in him.
You can throw us in that fire. We know that he can rescue us, 'cause he's God. He can do anything." There's two things you definitely know in life, and that is, I know that there is a God, and number two is I know that I'm not him. So that's easy. I know there's a God. He can rescue us, but even if he doesn't rescue us, we'll keep believing in him.
We'll keep having our hope in him, 'cause he's bigger than us. He's bigger than our thoughts and our ideas. We know that he's got stuff sorted. I will obey God even before I see the outcome. Obey God.
Okay, so I did say we're gonna land it, didn't I? So let's go. Let's land this thing. What do you do when you're in the valley? What do you do? First, keep looking to God. Keep looking to God. Ezekiel didn't create the miracle, God did. Your hope isn't in your ability to fix everything. We often try to do that, don't we?
Men are probably more prone to this one. We're trying to fix it. We wanna fix stuff. I'll fix this. I've got this all under control
Don't do that. Your hope is in God. Second, listen. Listen for God's voice. God spoke before the bones moved. Sometimes we are so focused on what we see that we stop listening for what God is saying. Sometimes we get so fixated on the bones, on the issue, on the problem, and we stop listening or we fail to hear what God is saying.
God's just gently directing us, but we don't hear that 'cause the situation's so loud So keep listening for His voice. Third, keep obeying. Ezekiel did as God commanded him to do. He spoke when God told him to speak. Keep doing what God asks you to do. Fourth, I like this one, keep breathing. Keep breathing.
In and out every day. Keep breathing. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Don't isolate yourself. Stay connected to God. Stay connected to this Christian community. Come to church. Come to church.
It's so important that you connect with people that believe the same as you believe, people that might hear something from God and have a word for you on that day that you're here, and they share that word with you
Keep worshiping, keep praying. And last one, keep expecting God to be God. Yeah. Put your hope in Him. Even if He doesn't, we're still gonna worship Him. We're still gonna obey Him Don't necessarily expect him to do everything you want it, everything done the way you want it done That is the heart of biblical hope, I believe.
So there we go. So the question God asked Ezekiel, "Son of Man, can these bones live?" He doesn't ask, "Do these bones look alive?" No, they didn't. Does this situation seem promising? Son of man, he's... No, it didn't. He's asked, "Can these bones live?"
So the ultimate achievement is we wanna go from dry bones to abundant life The story of Ezekiel starts with death, but it doesn't end there. Begins with hopelessness, but it ends up with an army standing
That's what God does. And John 3:16 tells us why He does it. He does it because He loves you. He loves you. He loves you. You are already irresistible. And John 10:10 tells us what Jesus came to do. He came to give you life, and life to the full. Life right now. Not heaven time. Heaven time's gonna be great, but life right now.
You can live in that fullness right now So let's imagine. I shall get everyone to close their eyes. Just close your eyes for a moment. And I just really believe, I just believe that this is a message that someone needs to hear this morning. Might be online even, you might need to hear this And I want you to imagine your life.
So I don't, I, and I don't know where everyone's at the moment. There might be... You might feel like you're in that valley right now. You might feel like you're in that valley of dry bones
And from where you're standing and where you're looking, it feels like there is no evidence that anything could change
There are dry bones everywhere
But as you sit there quietly, I want you to realize and I want you to know that God is right there. God is right there. Can you see Him? Can you see Him? And He speaks. God speaks, and what looks like a cemetery becomes a place of life
Church, that valley is not the end. There is a future. There is still a God who loves you
Or if all you can see is that brokenness and all you can see is that struggle, then just remember the God who brought an army out of a valley full of bones is still God. And Jesus, who walked out of that grave and defeated death, He is still alive today And if Jesus is alive, then I want to tell you right now that there is hope.
There is hope. Hope of change, hope of life
and hope for the mountaintops
So as we have our eyes closed, let's all just pray together. Father, we just thank you. Lord, I thank you that you are the God of hope God, thank You, You are the God of new beginnings, of fresh starts. Lord, we thank You for Your forgiveness. We thank You for Your grace toward us. Lord, we confess, Lord, that we let You down.
Lord, we let You down. We sin. We make bad choices. Lord, we do confess that now, Lord, and we just, we ask, Lord, and pray for Your forgiveness. We pray for a new beginning
And Lord, we just thank You. Pray, Lord, that this word be sealed in our hearts this morning, that hope. Our circumstance right now is not the end. Our circumstance will change, and we believe that with all our heart. And Lord, I thank You. Lord, I pray for each and every person here today. Lord, You know where everyone is at.
You can see right into their soul and their heart right now. You know what's going on in their lives. Father, I pray that You will just reach in and meet them there
And Lord, we just believe you for that, and we believe you for victory, and we believe you for the mountaintop We ask this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen Amen