Subject: CHRIST: THE HOPE OF THE WORLD.
Text: Romans 8:24-25: "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."
Few if any of the peoples of the world have ever been subjected to as much persecution and afflictions over as long a period of time as have the Jewish people.
Following around four hundred years in bondage in Egypt and the forty years in the wilderness, they eventually entered the land of Canaan, came to possess much of the land, and, under the reigns of King David and King Solomon, became the leading nation in terms of power and wealth in that part of the world.
Yet, through disobedience unto God and idolatry, following King Solomon's death, the nation was divided, then invaded and conquered, and the people scattered to many parts of the world. We are aware of the fact that the persecution of the Jews continued to break out from time to time across the centuries in many different parts of the world with millions of them being put to death in Poland and Germany during the lifetime of many of us.
Across the multiplied centuries, however, the Jewish people have clung to their national identity, and, even in the darkest of times, have held on to a hope that a better day was coming for them.
The orthodox Jew looks upon his people as being a chosen people with a special place in the world destined for them by God.
For centuries, after it became clear that the kingdom of Israel would never be restored to its former power and glory through human effort, the Jews looked forward to the coming of a Messiah, One anointed of God, Who would restore again the kingdom to Israel.
Following a time of great tribulation, they looked forward to Elijah as the forerunner and herald of the Messiah, and then they expected the Messiah to come from God, destroy their enemies, gather the dispersed Jews back to Palestine from all over the world, and usher in a new age with Palestine as the center of the world and all the world subject to it. Then there was to come an age of peace and goodness which would last forever.
It was this hope that kept the Jewish people going through the dark times of their history. Without this hope, perhaps they would have just given up their national identity, been absorbed by the nations into which they were dispersed, and perhaps the modern-day nation of Israel would never have come into existence.
Without hope, a nation or a person loses courage in the difficult times; life tends to lose its meaning and becomes a sad, dreary existence, a journey down a dead-end street into a dark, empty future, a trip through the world without the light of a bright future or the friendly glow of an open door as one enters the valley of the shadow.
Sometime ago two socially prominent and wealthy people were found shot to death in their suburban home in Philadelphia. The wife called a state patrolman and told him that her husband had begged her to kill him and she had. "Now," she said, "I am going to kill myself." A few minutes later policemen entered their home and found the bodies. They also found a simple note with the words: "We have no hope for the future."
An outstanding university student jumped from his dormitory room window to the pavement below and to his death. He, too, left a brief note. It said, "There is utterly no hope!"
All nations and people go through some difficult times on the pathway of life. No matter how difficult the pathway, so long as there is hope for the future, so long as there is the genuine expectation of a brighter and better day ahead, there is courage to keep pressing on. But when hope goes, courage goes. Clouds overshadow the sun. The stars go out. Duty becomes a burden, and life tends to lose its meaning.
Elijah came in the form of John the Baptist.
The Messiah came in the form of a little baby in a manger of Bethlehem. When He failed to do what the Jewish people expected the Messiah to do for the Jewish people, their leaders for the most part rejected Him, and He was nailed to a cross, suffered and died, and was put in Joseph's tomb.
But the third day He arose from the grave. Some forty days later He ascended into Heaven and took His place at the right hand of God. From thence He will come some glorious day to judge the living and the dead.
We call Him the hope of the world, and we join with Peter in saying, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time."
Those who truly believe in Jesus have a lively - a living - hope! It is a hope that is built upon Christ. It is a hope that every person on earth may share in, for Christ came, not just for a few Jews nor for a few Americans but for all the world.
When we say, "Christ is the hope of the world," we are setting forth one of the great truths of the Universe. Christ is the One, and the only One, Who offers the world a foundation adequate enough to build a bright and beautiful future upon.
The great problems of the world today are rooted in sin - in human selfishness, human greed, human lust, human self-centeredness. The one great need of the world today is for righteouesness! Righteousness exalts a nation. Righteousness exalts and blesses a person.
The world is in the tragic condition it is in because people do not treat one another right; because nations do not treat other nations right; because people do not treat even themselves right; and because people do not treat their Creator right.
But where can we get the righteousness of God, the righteousness that causes us to be right and do right and walk right and talk right and treat people right and treat God right?
The only place that true righteousness can be obtained is from Christ; or, as the Apostle Paul puts it, "not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith..."
Sin is a problem of the heart. Jesus said that the things which defile us come out of our hearts, out of our inmost being. We are born with a sinful nature, and as long as we have a sinful nature, a heart filled with selfishness and self-will and worldliness, we are going to continue doing wrong.
More laws will not solve the problem because sinful hearts are not going to be obedient unto good laws.
More policemen will not solve the problem, nor will more education or more science or more psychology or more powerful armed forces because none of these can change the human heart.
You may remember that a few years ago the nations of the world gathered in Rome for a conference on how to deal with world hunger. One of the basic conclusions that came out of the conference was that enough food could be produced for everyone so that no one need go hungry; but, there will continue to be much hunger throughout the world. Why? "Because," the report implied, "we do not know how to change people, and people are what cause the problem in the first place with their selfishness and greed and desire for profit and the like."
Some years ago Dr. John R. Church, in one of his sermons, told of a college professor in a school in California who told his class that we came into the world pure and innocent and that all that was necessary to bring a person up to become a fine Christian was to bring him up in a proper environment. After he had expounded along that line for awhile, a student spoke up.
He said in effect that if anyone had ever been brought up in a Christian home and in a good environment, he had been. He told something of how saintly his parents had been, of how they had family worship twice a day, asked the blessing at each meal, had been faithful to the church and had taught him as best they could to live right and had sought to lead him to Christ.
"But," the young man said, "down through the years there has been something within me that made me want to do things that were bad and wrong, and it has caused me no end of trouble and has brought grief to my parents. If that is not inbred sin, original sin, or natural depravity, then what do you call it?"
All the answer the professor had, after some moments of thought, was to say, "Ah, that is the question, young people. That is the question!"
All of us, when we are aware of the facts and are honest with ourselves, know deep down within our souls that our own big battle with sin and evil is the struggle with that which is wrong in our own hearts and souls. And we should know that this is one battle that we can never win in our own strength.
Some well-meaning people may sometimes get the idea that some of the other religions of the world may be just as good for those who believe in them as Christianity is for those who believe in Christ.
Yet the fact of the matter is that Christ is the only adequate hope of the world in attaining unto true righteousness because Jesus is the only One Who can give us a new heart and a new spirit.
Jesus is the only one who can take away our hard stony hearts and give us a heart of flesh, a heart filled with love and kindness and goodwill.
Jesus is the only one who can bring us to spiritual birth and life.
This is why the Bible speaks of conversion as being born of the Spirit. This is why we read that if anyone be in Christ Jesus, he or she is a new creature, with old things passed away and with all things become new.
It makes no difference what our past has been or what we are in the present. Through faith in Christ we can become new creatures. Through faith in Him we can attain unto the righteousness of Christ, the righteousness which comes of God by faith.
I like a story that Donald E. Wildmon tells about a Methodist church that needed a church janitor. The pastor suggested to the Administrative Board that they employ a town loafer, a man by the name of Anderson. There was silence for a little while. Then someone spoke up: "Is that the best we can do? He has been a bum for years. No one in the city has any respect for him."
They decided to wait another week to see if someone else could be found. No one else was found so he was employed.
As time passed, he began to take pride in his work. He began to change his own ways, too. He kept the church clean and he kept himself clean. He became polite, agreeable and anxious to please. For a year he sat on the back seat at every service and listened carefully. Then one day he went to see the minister to see if he might make his profession of faith and unite with the church.
He was received into church membership.
Another year passed. He went to the minister and asked if he might teach a class of boys. Permission was granted and he was still teaching the class when the minister was moved to another church.
It was several years before the minister came back to the town. He was met at the railway station, when he did return, by one of the church members who said that he was to drive him to the home where he was to be a guest. "Your host," he said, "was tied up in a board of directors' meeting at the bank and couldn't get away. You are to stay at the home of Mr. Anderson."
He discovered that the former town loafer and bum was now one of the most respected men in town and president of the local bank.
"But he still teaches the class of boys in Sunday School and he is still the janitor of the church," the man said. "Many times he has said, 'God cleaned my life and my soul, and as long as I live I will personally see that His house is kept clean.'"
I like that song, "It Is No Secret What God Can Do," especially the chorus:
"It is no secret what God can do.
What He's done for others,
He'll do for you.
With arms wide open He'll welcome you.
It is no secret what God can do."
Christ is indeed the hope of the world for righteousness, for He is indeed the only One Who can give us a new heart and a new spirit and deal with the sin problem at the very root of it.
Christ is also the hope of the world for peace.
The world yearns for peace and longs for peace. Yet there can be no peace as long as the human heart is filled with selfishness, greed and wrong desires and so long as the human soul is at enmity with God.
"There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." (Isaiah 48:22.)
"From whence come wars and fightings among you?" asks James in his epistle. "Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?"
James and Isaiah place the root of war and strife right in the human heart because these things also have their root in the sinful nature of mankind.
Peace is the result of a right relationship with God.
Across the ages, nations and peoples have hoped for peace and have yearned for the time to come when swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks, when nation shall not lift up sword against nation and when people shall learn war no more.
Yet peace is not found at conference tables or in pacts among the nations because there can never be true peace apart from a right relationship with God or apart from righteousness.
Isaiah realized this when he wrote, "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever." (32:17)
We grow weary of the strife among the nations of the world, of the invasion of one nation by another, of civil war within nations, and the constant stream of refugees and the continuing death from bombs and bullets. It all seems so senseless and so useless.
Abraham Lincoln commented on the senselessness of war once, saying, "Suppose you go to war. You cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you."
Yet, why should we expect nations to live at peace among themselves when sometimes we do not even have peace within our own souls or within our own families or within our own communities or where we work or where we go to school?
The great struggle in the world is rooted in a wrong relationship with God manifested in wrong desires and goals in the human heart.
Jesus is the Prince of Peace because He is the only One Who can change the human heart. He is the only One Who can deal with the sin problem in our own lives so that we can live at peace with ourselves, with our fellowmen, and with all people in the world.
Love is the antidote to hate; good-will is the antidote to ill-will; kindness is the antidote to cruelty; and righteousness, the righteousness which is of God by faith in Jesus Christ, is the pathway to peace.
We also call Jesus the hope of the world because He is the pathway, the door, to eternal life, and the way to our Father's house.
Life without eternal hope is a journey on a one-way street that ends in a blind alley and winds up in a hole in the ground in a cemetery.
All of us long for not only the abundant life in this world but for the glorious life immortal when our earthly journey is over. What is our hope for eternal life?
On one occasion many of Jesus' disciples became offended at Him and went back and walked with Him no more. Jesus turned to the twelve and asked them if they, also, would go away.
Simon Peter said, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God."
When Jesus comes into our hearts, we then have a hope of eternal life that is steadfast and sure, and our futures are bright.
Down across the centuries the storms of time continue to rage. The pathway of life continues to have its difficult places, its trials and afflictions, its times of sorrow and heartache, its times of pain and suffering, its times of darkness and discouragement.
But if our faith is firmly in Christ, then we can say, with the Apostle Paul, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." For beyond the storms we can see the clearing; beyond the clouds we can see the sunshine; beyond the night we can see the breaking of the day; and yonder in the unfolding future, we can see the coming of Christ with the holy angels and the ushering in of that great eternal kingdom where God dwells with His people and not only wipes away all tears from their eyes, but where there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things will have passed away and all things shall have been made new.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
"For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."