Morning.
I want to read a few Scriptures before we begin, starting with Acts 1:6.
They therefore, when they were come together, asked Him, Jesus, saying, “Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
And He said unto them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority.
But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
And when He had said these things, as they were looking, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
And while they were looking steadfastly into heaven as He went, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
who also said, “Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye looking into heaven? This same Jesus, Who was received up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye beheld Him going into heaven.”
And then in 2 Peter 3:11:
Seeing that these things are thus all to be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy living and godliness,
looking for and earnestly desiring the coming of the day of God?
And then in Luke—I know, I make you go back and forth, I know—Luke 19:11:
And as they heard these things, He added and spake a parable, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was immediately to appear.
He said therefore, “A certain nobleman went into a far country, to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.
And he called ten servants of his, and gave them ten pounds, and said unto them, ‘Trade ye herewith till I come.’”
And then 1 Thessalonians 1, starting with verse 1:
Paul, and Silvanus, and Timothy, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.
We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers;
remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father;
knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election, how that our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance; even as ye know what manner of men we showed ourselves toward you for your sake.
And ye became imitators of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit;
so that ye became an example to all that believe in Macedonia and in Achaia.
For from you hath sounded forth the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place your faith toward God is gone forth; so that we need not to speak anything.
For they themselves report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God,
and to wait for His Son from heaven, Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, Who delivereth us from the wrath to come.
So, just have a word of prayer.
Heavenly Father, we come to You this morning with thanks, knowing that You have redeemed us. And, Lord, we are just rejoicing in that fact: that You have redeemed us; that on the cross, Jesus Christ paid for our sins, and You judged our sins in Him.
And, Lord, because You were pleased with what He did, You raised Him from the dead. We thank You, and we glory, and we revel in that. We revel that we can stand before You today holy and blameless.
And, Lord, we also thank You that we have not been left to our own. He has not just died; He has not just been raised; but, Lord, You promise that He is going to come again to take His own home. And, Lord, we thank You that this is a fact.
And, Lord, we ask that this morning You would open up Your Word to us, and put in our hearts, Lord, the things that You want. Speak to us, Lord, things that draw us to You and make us look up and sigh, Lord, even for our salvation.
And, Lord, we just need Your help in doing this. I ask for Your Holy Spirit to speak. I thank You, Lord, that I am hidden in Jesus Christ. And, Lord, I just pray that only Christ—only, only Him—would be able to come forth today. And I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
This morning, I would like to speak out of 1 Thessalonians. First Thessalonians was the first letter that was written by Paul that we have. We do not know if he had written any others, but this is the one we have. And so, it was the first one written by him to any church.
And in it, all throughout it, every chapter says something about the coming back of the Lord Jesus.
I can remember, as a young Christian—I think some of you that are my age are just a little beyond that—one of the main things when we became Christians in the Jesus generation was the promise that He was coming back. And how we looked forward to that day.
Can you remember some of the bumper stickers we used to have? Remember, “In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned”? Remember that one? Remember this thing: “I’m going to be a bachelor till the rapture”?
We did all sorts of funny things like that. But, you know, the hope was genuine. It was something we were looking forward to and hoping: this could be it. This could be the day.
I remember one time we had hiked down to the Grand Canyon area. Well, before you get to the Grand Canyon, there is a little Indian reservation known for its waterfall. It is called Havasupai.
We were reading a book about the last days, and in the book it happened to say, “You know, it could be that September 5, 1975, is the day He comes back.” It happened to be that that was the night of September 5.
It was my brother and a couple of friends. We were all speculating all through the night: “This could be it. What do you think? This could be it.” And I remember we woke up disappointed, because the night had gone and the Lord had not come back.
And time has gone by. It has been, what, almost thirty years? But the thing that I have noticed in my own heart is that hope has dimmed. It has just gotten dim.
You get caught up in life. He has not come back. You get caught up in the job, you get caught up in taking care of your kids, and it is gone, or it is very dim—just put on the back shelf somewhere. “Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, He is coming back again.” But it is almost like living as though He is not coming back again.
And that is sad. That is a sad thing to realize.
It is interesting that when Paul wrote Thessalonians, he was writing to a church that was in the midst of some problems. And the way he comforted them was to say, “The Lord is coming back.”
And I need that. I need just a reminder that the Lord is coming back—that we are living for a purpose. We are looking for Him to come back from heaven to take us, to take us to be with Him, because that is what our salvation is all about: to be with Him forever. We have been created for Him.
And so, this morning, that is what we want to look at. We want to look at the Lord’s coming back.
I do not know if I am going to speak again out of 1 Thessalonians, because I am very convicted about some of the things in it. But I do just want to say that, in looking at His coming back, in verses 9 and 10 it says they turned from idols to wait for Him.
And so, what I want to look at is this: How do I get my waiting heart back?
How is it that the heart that once waited for this One that I love to come back and take me—how do I get that back? I am much older. I am not the giddy young man I used to be; I am much more cynical. But how do I get that heart back?
Again, I am not going to give a word-by-word dissertation or exposition on these things, but I just want to share what the Lord has put on my heart. How do we go about waiting for Him?
I think there are a couple things that the Lord has on His heart to renew our hearts for this. One of them is that there are some things we must know. And then, secondly, there are some things we must do.
We must know some things, and we must be assured of some things. Looking at this first chapter of 1 Thessalonians, Paul is speaking these things and saying, “I have seen this in you, Thessalonians.” What he has seen, he brings up and says, “I have seen this in you,” and this is the very thing that I think the Lord wants us to see.
If you look in verse 4, it says:
Knowing, brethren beloved of God, your election.
Now, some of your verses say, “Knowing your election of God,” or “Beloved, knowing your election of God,” but that is not a good translation. The better translation is actually, “Knowing, beloved of God, your election.”
And so, we want to look at it this way: one of the things we must know in order to have our hearts restored—the first thing we must know—is that we are beloved of God.
That is just a very simple thing, and yet it is a very powerful thing. If you remember when you were first saved, how much that meant to you.
But, you know, as time goes on, water can wash over a stone until it gets smooth, and it does not have the same kick to it sometimes. It just becomes almost the same old, same old. I am sorry, but sometimes that is what it becomes.
But it is the truth: we are the beloved of God.
I would like to use an example to make this known. I thought a lot about David and Kelly since they are getting married. I am sorry to use you guys, but think of this.
What would happen today if, for example, David got drafted into the armed forces for the duration of the war on terrorism—which we do not know when it is going to end? So, let us say that happened, and he got stationed somewhere like Uzbekistan.
I was going to say Ashurbanipal, but I thought some people would know that is not a place; that is a person. Yeah, look it up. I think he is a king of Assyria.
But let us say that happened. Well, now they are engaged, right? She is betrothed to him, and vice versa. How could she last? What could make her last out until the duration of the war?
That is really hard, is it not? It is hard when you think of it in that way.
But one of the things that probably would help her most is to know that he loved her—to know that she is his beloved—and that he has promised that when his duty is done, he is going to come back and get her.
Now, she has got to love him an awful lot. But the same thing: he has got to love her enough to come back, right? Because it is a duration. It is a long time.
So the first thing I think the Lord wants us to know, and wants us to be refreshed in, is that we are His beloved, that His love for us has not cooled one degree.
As a matter of fact, I remember waiting for my wedding day. We were engaged for six months, and it seemed like an eternity.
Just waiting for that six months, the desire to be married—to have my wife—just grew day by day by day by day. It did not diminish and say, “Yeah, it will come. Do not worry about it.” But I was anticipating that day, looking forward to that day.
And the joy it was to see my wife coming down the aisle. You brothers, I know, experienced the same thing. When you saw your wife coming down the aisle, how much that meant to you.
So the first thing we want to know is that we are beloved by God.
Secondly, what we want to see is our election. Now, our election does not mean that all the angels got together and voted who would get into heaven and who would not get into heaven. They did not say to God, “Why do not You pick him? He is really good. He is really good at sports. And this guy, he is a good speaker. Why do not You pick him?”
That is not what we are talking about by being elected by God. It does mean He chose us.
And just as David chose Kelly, she has been elected by him. He chose her. But it is not simply the sense that she has been chosen; it is that in being chosen, he has committed himself to her.
I asked him this morning, because I did not want to embarrass him, “Did you get her an engagement ring?” And he told me yes. So, you know, that ring is his commitment.
He gave her a ring to say, “I am committed to marry you. This is my desire, and I just want to show you that I meant what I said.”
My poor wife did not get an engagement ring until ten years after we were married. She loved me anyway. But you think about that: “Does he really want to marry me? He did not give me anything.”
But the Lord is committed to us. I could say, “Well yes, He has given the Holy Spirit to us, and that is His earnest,” but more than that, He is committed to us. He is committed to seeing us through to being His bride.
I remember the first time I spoke. I shared an experience that I had as a young Christian, where I was ready to give up on the Lord and say, “Lord, just go on. Leave me for dead.”
I was sharing that I went to the Rose Parade, which is in Pasadena. You guys do not have parades around here. But at New Year’s, we went down there, and somebody I did not even know saw me—but they knew me—and they told someone else, “I saw Jim Bogdal once, and the guy is messed up. You need to call him.”
The guy invited me to church, and I think I shared the “I Love You, Big Dummy” song. But the whole thing was, the Lord was so committed that when I first said, “Lord, I want You to come into my life. I want You to be my Savior,” He said right away, “It is good forever, Jim. I am not going to let you go. I am committed to see you through the whole way.”
That is what we need to see: we are elected. We need to see our election. Paul said it was not that the Thessalonians saw that they were elected, but Paul said, “I saw your election.” You know how he saw it? Because when he started preaching, the power of God was with him.
Then he had seen things in their lives that showed him they were elected, that God chose them. It is the same for us. God is committed. God is committed the whole way.
When we get married—you know, when I married my wife—it is a wonderful joke I heard one time. The preacher said, “You take this man for better, for worse, in sickness and health, richer or poorer.” My wife said, “Take him for better, for richer, and for health. But the other ones, I am not going to take them.”
But the commitment is for better or worse. So, if you came to the Lord and you backslide, does the Lord say, “No”? No. The Lord comes after you.
The Lord paid a big price for you. We are His beloved. He paid the price, and He is coming back to get us. He is coming back. We are His betrothed, and He is ours. He has not forgotten.
That is the whole story here in Thessalonians. These people were suffering. They were being persecuted. And he is saying, “The Lord is coming for you.”
How do we go about waiting? What do we have to do? What must we do?
You remember I read that little passage from Luke, where the nobleman gives talents to these people. Well, this is how we wait. The Lord has given us something, and He said, “I want you to do business.”
A lot of times we think that waiting is just passing time. If I am waiting for my daughter in the morning, I am passing time. She knows it, does she not? I am passing time. And sometimes when I am passing time, I am not the happiest man. But I pass the time, and I do nothing. I just wait.
Waiting is a foreign thing to today’s generation. We do not know how to wait. Look at the inventions we have had that have made it so we do not have to wait: microwave, Minute Rice, the line in the grocery store—twelve items or less. No waiting.
We do not like to wait, is that not true? Do you not get upset when you have to wait for something? Even for food. Sometimes they are awful slow today.
But the Lord wants us to wait for Him. How do we go about waiting? He has given us something to help us wait. He has given us some talents.
Now, I am not going to say that these talents are your gifts. I am just going to put it this way. In 1 Thessalonians 1:3, it says:
Remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father.
The Lord has given us some things to do business with. I am going to give you a little economic lesson here, okay? He gives us three things to do business with: He gives us faith, He gives us love, and He gives us hope.
We are to do business with these things. In other words, we are not just to stand around and think about what love is. Like, was it Browning that said, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”? We can wax poetical about what love is and what faith is, because those are just words. They are pretty words, but they are just words.
But we want to have these words fleshed out. They need to have some substance to them. Something has to be done with them. And so the Lord says, “I am giving you these things. Do business with them.”
In other words, you have got to exchange them. You have got to do something with them. You cannot just keep them there and say, “Oh, my faith is over here.” Even James says, “Show me your faith, and I will show you my faith by my works.” How are you going to show me your faith? It is what you do.
The first thing is faith, and he says it is a work of faith. So faith, then, is a unit of exchange. That is my economic thing, okay? It is your money, your unit of exchange. In other words, to get the things that God wants, your unit of exchange is faith.
You get things from God through faith. And I am not talking about, “I want a Cadillac, God. I am believing for it.” I am not talking like that.
It says in Ephesians 2:10 that we have been created for good works, prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
It takes faith to walk in those good works. Now, I do not mean that God comes along and, when you get saved, He goes, “Oh yeah, by the way, here are these good works. You have got to do them.” He does not leave them at the door and leave, saying, “Just make sure you do them all, because I am counting.”
Nor does He say, “Here, I brought You some things I think You can do.” He does not do that either.
But what He does is He draws you out. He draws you out to a place where you start to depend on Him. That is your unit of exchange: your dependence on Him.
If you look at Abraham very briefly, when God called Abraham, what He said to Abraham was, “I want you to leave life as you know it.”
Think about that. “I want you to leave life as you know it.” What is life as you know it? “Well, I live in a city. I have a job. I have everything I need. I pay my bills. I do the things. I need nothing.”
Leave that life. Leave the life of independence. Leave the life of not needing God, and come out, and I will show you what I want from you. He did not even say anything else: “I will show you the place I am going to give you.” That is all He told him.
It took Abraham a little while before he actually went out and did it. Another thing about Abraham: when we talk about election, who did God choose? He chose an idolater. Is that not amazing? He chose an idolater.
We do not even know if Abraham was seeking God, because Acts just says the God of glory appeared to him. He appeared to him and said, “I want you to leave life as you know it.”
The life I want for you is this: “I want you to bank on Me. I want you to throw all your weight on Me. That is what I want from you.” Now, that is the start of faith.
When we become Christians, we think, “Okay, believe on the Lord, our sins are forgiven,” but that is where faith ends. We are supposed to be living a life of faith, a life of dependence. That is all it means. That is what the life of faith is: a life of depending on God.
I need God’s help in this. I cannot go to my own self; it is beyond me. Or even if it is not beyond me, I cannot trust myself. Leave life as you know it.
Abraham goes out, and God brings him deeper and deeper and deeper into His bank, into His place, into His unit of exchange. He did not come out and say, “Abraham, your wife is going to have a baby, and then you are going to have to kill him.” He did not do that.
But He brought him out to the place and said, “Okay, you are here now,” and He made him a promise. Then He brought him a little farther, and He made him a promise, and He reaffirmed promises. He drew him out and drew him out until finally, because all these things had happened, Abraham could believe in God.
So that even when he lost his trust and had Ishmael by Hagar, God could come to him later on and say, “No, it is going to be through Sarah.” Even though Abraham could laugh, “Oh, come on, how can this be?” Romans says that he believed, even though his body was as good as dead.
Then, when he struggled and the Lord said, “Take your only son Isaac, the one with the promise, and I want you to offer him up to Me,” he came up with this saying: “God has promised me this son, and through his life there is supposed to come a seed that is going to bless the whole earth. He must plan to raise him from the dead, because this God I have is trustworthy.”
That is it. We make transactions, and when we make transactions with God, the thing we get out of it is a knowledge of God. It is an experiential knowledge of God, because God is not out for us to be book learners. He wants us to know Him. He wants us to know Him experientially.
I am sure David did not say to Kelly, “Hey, look. Once we get married, here is my portfolio. There you go. All you need to know. I have other business to do.” No.
Part of the joy of being married is you get to know one another. So the same with the joy of knowing God: you get to know Who He is.
There is a wonderful verse in Ephesians where He talks about knowing the love of God—its depth and its breadth and its width and length. I did a message on that once, and I said, “I cannot tell you how long or how deep God’s love is.” The reason why is because God wants you to find that out for yourself.
He wants you to find it. He wants you to find His love for you, even in your deepest distress.
The song says, “And sanctify to you your deepest distress.” In your deepest distress, know the love of God. Know that God loves you. In your highest joy, know that God loves you. In the mundane, know that God loves you.
So faith is our unit of exchange. Peter says in 1 Peter 1:9, “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” The salvation of your soul is that you become like Jesus, and Jesus was the most dependent of any.
Here was the One Who needed to be the least dependent, and yet, for our sakes, He became man so He could be dependent upon the Father.
Now, secondly: the labor of love. This is the unit of exchange that God wants back from us. In other words, we buy from God with our faith, but we pay Him back with love.
Looking at love, it is love to Him, but it is not love directly to Him. I know: “What the heck is Jim talking about?” Well, let us take a look at this.
In John 15:12, Jesus says:
This is My commandment, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.
Then in John 21:15:
So when they had broken their fast, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me more than these?”
He saith unto Him, “Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
He saith unto him, “Feed My lambs.”
He saith to him again a second time, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?”
He saith unto Him, “Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
He saith unto him, “Tend My sheep.”
He saith unto him the third time, “Simon, son of John, lovest thou Me?”
Peter was grieved because He said unto him the third time, “Lovest thou Me?” And he said unto Him, “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
Jesus saith unto him, “Feed My sheep.”
And then one other passage, from 1 John 4:7:
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
There are two great commandments. One is that you love God with all your soul, mind, strength, and heart. The other is that we love our neighbor as ourselves.
How do we love God? We cannot see Him. We cannot touch Him. How do we love Him?
Well, we can say, “I read my Bible. I pray.” Now, those are forms of love, forms of communication. But if we leave it off there, we are going to have a monastic Christianity: “It is just You and me, Lord. That is it.”
But the love that God wants is that love plus loving Him by loving the brethren.
In Matthew, He talks about separating the goats and the sheep. He says, “Come into the joy of the Lord.” They ask, “Why are You bringing us here?” He says, “Because when I was thirsty, you gave Me a drink. When I was naked, you clothed Me. When I was in jail, you visited Me.”
They said, “When did we see You like this?” And what did He reply?
When ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it unto Me.
For some of us, we need to understand that everybody in here who believes on the Lord is the elect of the Lord. God chose them.
We cannot say, “Well, how did God choose him?” It does not matter. It does not matter why God chose them. What matters is He did choose them, and we are to love them.
Our love to Him is partly, again being an economic thing, funneled back through our love of the saints.
Now, Christian economics is a little different than the United States system. If we looked at the economic system here, the Federal Reserve system, when interest rates go up, business and investment go down, right? And vice versa: when interest rates go down, everything goes up.
Well, in Christian economics, when interest rates are up, business is up, because the more interested we are in the brothers and sisters, the more we do.
We have to have an interest. We have to have an interest in others besides ourselves. That is hard to do, because I know I am number one.
This is very convicting to me, but we have a dog. I will get up at 5:30 in the morning to take that dog out so it can go to the bathroom. But what do I do for my brothers and sisters?
My dog—what eternal value is my dog compared to you? It is really convicting.
But the thing is, that is what God wants us to see. He has so much value in His people, and He wants us to love them. Because when we love them, we are loving Him.
He wants us to be interested in them, interested in their welfare. Now it says it is a labor of love.
That is a tough word, because the actual meaning is earnest, toilsome service. That does not sound really fun, does it?
We want to think of love as being happy and romantic, and there are times when it is. It is wonderful. But, my brothers and sisters, there are times where it is toilsome and tough.
As a matter of fact, this labor of love includes self-denial and exhaustion, because the whole heart has been thrown into it. Amazing.
I want to be a little funny and say, “You want to know what it is to have labor of love? Well, just have kids.” But really, that is not being funny.
Think of what you have done for your children: the nights you have spent up, maybe nursing them when they were sick. I remember once Katie swallowed a small nail. Well, you have to see if it passes. The things you have to do for those things.
But it is a labor of love. You do it willingly. You do it without grudge. If it is a grudge, it is not love.
When you start begrudging it, you have lost your love. But when you are doing it and it means, “It is just something I have to do,” that is love.
If you want to know the labor of love, you have got to take your place in the body of Christ. That means you have got to be with the brothers and the sisters.
Because if you are not, how can you see their needs? How can you love them? Are you going to send them a card here or there? No, love has to be more than a card. It has got to be more than Hallmark. It has got to be in shoe leather. It has got to be dressed. It has got to be ready to go.
You need to take your place in the body of Christ, among this family of the saints. Be there, so you know who is hurting; so you know whom you can serve and how you can serve them.
Then the Lord can say, “You need to pray for them, brother,” or, “You need to come alongside this one and tell them this.” That is loving them, even if it is telling them something they do not want to hear.
I tell my daughters all the time things they do not want to hear. But I love them. That is why I tell them that. Because if I do not, who will?
The Lord has chosen to use you to love His brothers and sisters. He has chosen to use you.
We need to be there, and love bears all. What is supposed to be our testimony? How will people know that we are His disciples?
By the meetings that we have? Did Jesus say, “They will know that you are My disciples by how many meetings you attend”? Or maybe He said, “By how many conferences you go to, they will know you are My disciples.” Or maybe He said, “By the doctrine that you hold to, they will know you are My disciples.”
Well, I am wrong on all accounts, am I not? Remember that song we sang in the seventies?
We are one in the Spirit,
We are one in the Lord.
And they will know we are Christians by what? By our love. That is our testimony. That is the testimony we are supposed to have in the world: that we love the brethren, and we love His coming.
Third, our third part of currency here is patience—steadfastness of hope is actually a better translation—steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus.
Hope in Christ is not an iffy thing. It is not, “It might happen. He might be coming back.” No, it is a sure thing. He might not be coming back in our lifetime, but then again, He might. It is a sure expectation.
Our hope is like government bonds. They are probably the most reliable thing you can have when you loan money. But hope grasps; it gets hold of the things that are reserved for us.
In Hebrews 6, it talks about hope being an anchor. It talks about an anchor being put within the veil. There are a couple of different anchors they had in the olden times.
One anchor you just drop so it will keep you from drifting. That is a good anchor to have. It is good to have an anchor to keep you from drifting.
But another anchor they had was this: if you were coming through a passage that was too narrow and too rocky, and you were going to have a hard time getting your boat in there, they would send a man ahead with an anchor. He would go in between the rocks, then he would anchor you, and then you would pull your boat in that way.
Hope is an anchor. It is not only an anchor to keep us from drifting, but it is an anchor to bring us in. So the hope is behind the veil, where He went. That is where it is. That is where we belong. And it is to bring us there.
Hope also brings to us the realization of what has been promised us. It is part of the process that makes real the thing that is promised.
John, in 1 John, talks about those who have this hope purifying themselves. That is the hope of His coming back and our being like Him. When you have a hope, it has an effect on your life.
When I was a young man in high school, I wanted to be an NBA basketball player. I had this hope that I was going to be one. I had this expectation that I was going to be in the NBA, and you could not tell me I would not be.
Because I had this hope, I was at the gym from when it opened at seven o’clock at night until ten o’clock every night. On Saturdays it was open from twelve to five, and on Sundays it was open from twelve to three. I was there every time.
I played against guys that were better than me because my hope was to be that NBA star. How could I get good? I denied myself just beating up on people because of my height, and played people who were better than me, because I had this expectation of being there.
We have a hope. It has an effect in our lives, a positive effect on our lives.
This hope is not to be a waxing or waning hope, like it is here today and gone tomorrow.
If you look back in Colossians 1, which is the book just before Thessalonians, in verse 21 it talks about:
And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works,
yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before Him:
if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel.
If we are moved away from the hope of the gospel, then we start thinking that Christ is not enough for us. We have got to go somewhere else.
We are supposed to hang on to that hope and not let it be taken away from us. Because everything says, when you look at yourself in the morning—when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I say, “My gosh, you have got to do something.”
But when we look at ourselves in our Christian walks, I think it is the same thing. We look at ourselves and go, “Oh, Lord, look at that. You have got to do something. Maybe you need to try this.”
The Lord is just saying, “Do not start trying to do this and that and the other thing. You just hold on to what I promised you. You hang on to it. You grasp onto that, and do not let it go, because that is what is going to see you through.”
Hope sees us through. What does it say in Romans? “Hope does not disappoint.” That is a wonderful verse. Hope does not disappoint. If I have this hope, I will not be disappointed. How wonderful that is.
The last thing I want to share about hope is in 1 Thessalonians 5:8, where it pictures hope as a helmet.
Our hope in Christ is to be at the forefront of our minds. You know what a helmet does? It protects your head.
Where do we get fouled up most of the time? In our heads. That is right: the way we think. That is why Paul says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” You have to start seeing things the way God sees them.
You have to start agreeing: “Okay, Lord, You said this. I agree. I believe You,” and then live out of that belief.
John Wesley came over to convert the Indians, and he said, “Oh, but who will convert me?” As he was going back over on the ship to England, he met some Moravians. They were going through a storm, and he said, “How come you guys can be so peaceful?”
They said, “Well, because we believe that we are the Lord’s and we are saved.” That really struck him, and he said, “Well, how can I preach that when I do not even have it?”
The Moravian brother said, “Well, preach it until you have it, and then preach it because you have it. Because if you preach it, there will not be a long time before you do have it.”
Hope is our helmet to guard our minds: the hope that we have in Christ, the hope that He is coming back. Things are so bad, but He is coming back.
Yeah, hallelujah. I heard that.
Now, what is the return to God? These are wonderful things, but there is something that goes to God, and that is in verse 9:
For they themselves report concerning us what manner of entering in we had unto you; and how ye turned unto God from idols, to serve a living and true God,
and to wait for His Son from heaven, Whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, Who delivereth us from the wrath to come.
Turn from idols. Now, I am not going to define idols and say, “This is an idol, and you better not do this,” and such like that. I just want to say this: I was reading somewhere, and I cannot remember where it was, but there is an idolatry that has in it a preoccupation with your life in this world.
You are just preoccupied with your life here. All these people who were idolaters prayed to these gods because, “We want a harvest. We want fruitfulness. We want this.” They were just so preoccupied with things here that they went to these idols for them.
Some of these idols led them into really defiling things. But what God gets out of this, as it says, is that they turn from idols to serve the living and true God.
What does God get out of our exchanging these things that He has given us to do business with? He gets a people who are not driven by desires for themselves.
That is what He wants: people who are not driven by desires for themselves. “I want this. I have got to have this. I need this.” Those desires never end.
They turn to serve another Master, another King, Whom they are waiting for from heaven. This is a bondslave’s life. This is what a bondslave does.
It says, “I am turning from this because I love. I love the One to Whom I have been enslaved. I love what He has given me, and I love all the things that He has provided for me. I will not go out free. I will take this rather than the other, because I am loved.”
That is the return God is looking for. He is patiently working to see that He gets that in us.
But until that time, when He gets what He wants, He has given us these three things: faith, love, and hope. And He said, “Do business with them until I come.”
By doing business with them, we will find ourselves transformed into the very thing God wants.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for the hope that You give us, that You can complete something in us that we just cannot do. We want to thank You that You have not left us to ourselves, but that You love us and that You promise to come back and get us.
Until that time, You have given us something of Yourself. You have given us the Holy Spirit to work in us. You have given us, Lord, faith to believe You, to trust You, to go out and find out Who You are.
You have given us love, so we can love You and love the brethren. And You have given us hope so that we might not be dismayed.
Lord, we thank You. We ask that as these days come on us this week, You will show us how to do business. We just want to take these things to You and say, “Lord, You have given them to us. Please show us how to do business.”
Because when we come back, we have that hope that we are going to be like You because of these things. So we commit ourselves and this word to You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.