If we could open our Bibles, beginning with 2 Corinthians 3. Second Corinthians 3:18:
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as from the Lord the Spirit.
Then, in the Old Testament, turn to Psalm 84, one of the songs of the sons of Korah. Some say this was written while they were in exile in Babylon. Beginning with Psalm 84:5:
Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee;
In whose heart are the highways to Zion.
Passing through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs;
The early rain also covereth it with blessings.
They go from strength to strength;
Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion.
Then Hebrews 6, beginning with verse 19:
Which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast
and entering into that which is within the veil;
Whither as a forerunner Jesus entered for us,
having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Finally, 1 John 3:3:
And every one that hath this hope set on Him
purifieth himself, even as He is pure.
Let’s pray.
Father, we come into Your presence with thanksgiving and praise because You have given us such a standing in Your Son. There is no way we could have attained this, but You have given it to us as a gift, and we worship You.
Lord, only You can reveal the things that are on Your heart. There is nothing I can say, nothing we have read, or anything like that, that can reveal You except You. So we appeal to You this morning that You would reveal Your heart to us and what You have done for us through Jesus Christ.
Lord, we commit this time to Your Holy Spirit. Illuminate, Lord, what is on Your heart to us, we ask, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Like all good teachers, you start with a little review, right? I am just going to read what I started with last time. I printed it out so I would remember it word for word.
As you know, my subject is hope. It is not hope as just a thing, but what our hope is as Christians. God has given us a hope. We talked about hope last time as being a favorable and confident expectation—not a wish, but an expectation.
It is not myopic or nearsighted. It has to do with the future and what is, at the moment, unseen. We likened it to baseball spring training. Everybody has the hope of winning the pennant, but they cannot see further down the line. Their hope is there.
A Christian’s hope is given to him by God. It is an expectation God gives me concerning His plan and His purpose for me—and we could say, for the whole church. It gives purpose to my life. It gives me a higher perspective as to why He saved me.
In other words, our hope does not depend on who we are, what we have, or where we might be. It is a gift from the sovereign God, and He calls us into it.
Our hope is not just that we go to, or be in, heaven. Our hope is to be transformed into those spirits of just men made perfect who dwell in the heavenly city of Zion.
Hope is meant to be realized. That is the reason it was given, and God never gives a false hope.
Today, we want to look at this hope as our being glorified. Remember, that was the whole thing last time. We see ourselves justified; we see ourselves called. But how little we see ourselves glorified in Christ—in His glory, shining with His glory because He shares it with us.
How little we do that. Yet this is really what God has meant for us when He saved us: to share in the glory of His Son, who is the beginning of a new creation. This is what is for us. This is what is meant for us as Christians.
So I would like to bring out this morning: How does this play out? How is it realized? How do we realize it? How are we brought through to the transformation we see in these spirits of just men made perfect? How does that happen to me? How does that happen to you? How do we come into the hope of this glory?
I want to start with a parable—not a biblical parable, okay? I am not going to read some parable from the Bible, but my own made-up parable. A parable illustrates a truth by using an earthly story. So I am going to use an earthly story that actually happened. Maybe it is more of an allegory than a parable, but you guys who know language can decide which it is.
When we think of 2 Corinthians 3:18 and Psalm 84, that is what this story refers to.
When I was a young man in high school, I played basketball. This is not a story about me; it is a story about that year.
Our high school was a football school. Basketball was an afterthought. Our football team was known for being league champions almost every year. Basketball was not bad, but it was never championship basketball. I was never a champion—never there.
We had a good season my junior year, and coming back for my senior year, I think the coach had high expectations for us.
I remember this was 1970—fifty-three years ago. I’m fifty-five.
We came out of the summer, and that was the first year our school dress code was made more lax. For the first time, boys could have facial hair, and we could have hair below our collars. We could wear shorts if we wanted to. You could not wear shorts in those days unless it was Bermuda Day. You guys remember that? You guys who are old people like me.
I remember the first day of school. One of our starting guards, Mike Keith, had a full beard. Here he was, like, seventeen, with this huge beard. It was really cool-looking.
And I do not know if you guys who are my age remember the movie Billy Jack. I had a Billy Jack Indian-reservation headband, okay? I had it tied around my head and decorated it.
My coach saw us and called us into his office—me and this guy with the beard. He was just like, “What are you guys doing? Mike, you come with a beard, and you come like some Indian out of a Western.”
I remember he was really upset. I think it was because he felt, “These guys—there is such promise that I have for them—and I am looking at them, and I do not think they realize it.”
The season did not start until November 1, but colleges could start October 15. Just before our season started, our coach—who had been captain of the 1953 UCLA Bruins basketball team—decided to take a group of us to watch UCLA practice.
Now, for those of you who know—and I know you younger kids have no idea—but for those of us of old age, UCLA was the cream. You could not get any better.
When I was in high school, from 1964 to 1975, UCLA won ten NCAA championships in twelve years. In the middle of those twelve years, they won seven in a row. Seven championships in a row! The New York Yankees did not even win seven World Series in a row. This was the greatest feat you could see.
In 1970, they had just won in 1967, 1968, and 1969. They had their fourth win in a row coming.
Our coach decided to take a group of us to watch them practice, and it was an awesome experience. I remember we went in Mr. Reed’s motor home. There were about seven or eight of us guys, and we went to practice at Pauley Pavilion.
There we were in the royalty of gyms for basketball. You saw the championship banners up there. Out on the floor were a couple of All-Americans. Then John Wooden, the Wizard of Westwood, came up to our coach and called him by his first name: “Barry, it’s good to see you.”
Man, we were floored. We were thinking, “He knows our coach!” And then you see him so familiar with our coach, and your mouth drops.
We watched practice, and all the drills that we did, they were doing. All those drills. They were practicing the offense we ran—because we were running their offense. The press, the man-to-man defense, everything was like that. Everything you could think of was just amazing.
When we left and were riding home, a couple of us had an epiphany. We saw something. What we saw was—I do not want to say that we were them—but we saw us in them. You know what I mean? We saw, as it were, that we were them and they were us.
All of a sudden, a few of us—not everyone, but a few of us—caught this little epiphany, this little vision. We started to say, “We’re champions.” We looked at them as champions and said, “That’s us. We’re champions.”
Now, just because you see something does not mean necessarily that it is right there or that it is just going to be handed to you. This was before our season started. How can you be a champion at the beginning of a season? You cannot. Why not? Because you have not played the season.
The whole idea was that we had seen ourselves as champions. We saw the end of the picture. The only thing was, we had to go through the things that brought us to that place.
I do not want to use “process” and make it mechanical, but there is a whole life to be lived. There is a whole season to go through that brings you to that place.
We had to do our conditioning. Nobody likes conditioning. We want to play the games. No—the first four weeks, all we did was run and run and run.
Then you have preseason practices. You have not even played a game yet, but you are learning the press, refining the press, refining the offense, and doing all those things you are supposed to do.
Then that vision is tested by the games you play. We had eleven preseason games—a potential eleven preseason games—and then we had a league season of another fourteen games. Every week, at least twice a week, that vision was tested.
The other thing was: What was going to get us through? We had a coach. We had a coach who knew how to get us there because he had gone through it before himself. He was a forerunner. He was a forerunner to that glory.
Like the Holy Spirit, he knew how to lead us through the things we were going to go through to the end he had in store for us. All we had to do was trust him. In trusting him, that meant submitting to what he had us do.
Coming back from that time at Pauley Pavilion, we gained a whole new respect for our coach—a respect he could have gotten no other way, in my thinking, than by bringing us there.
We had such a new respect for him that there was a submission to his tutelage. Instead of just saying, “Yeah, we’ll play the games,” there was a submission. It was saying, “We trust him because he was with John Wooden. He was like his son. How could we not trust him?”
We went into the season. You play the games, then you practice, hone in on your weaknesses, and do that all through the basketball season.
But another thing happened. In the late 1960s, when Lew Alcindor—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—played for the Bruins, they started to televise Bruin games on Friday and Saturday nights by tape delay. You could get home at ten o’clock and watch the Bruins play.
Our games were, I believe, Tuesdays and Fridays. After we had a victory, it was not just a matter of soaking in the victory: “Oh yeah, we’re the greatest.” It never got to that.
We would get home on Friday night, and instead of going out and partying, you know what we did? We turned on the tape delay of the Bruins.
That fortified that vision: “That’s us. We’re them. We’re champions, just like them.” It fortified that vision.
Can you see that as being like 2 Corinthians 3? We are beholding as in a mirror the glory—the image that we are being transformed into. We are being transformed, game by game by game, into this thing that we have seen. It is glorious to us.
It goes from glory to glory, from game to game, from practice to practice. It is being played out.
But when we saw that first practice, all of a sudden there was a highway built in our hearts—a highway to that championship.
Just like for the sons of Korah, there was a highway to Zion being built in their hearts. That highway leads them through hard times and high times, but it leads them all the way to where they are supposed to be.
We were champions three times. We did not get the final championship; we lost one game that year, and it was the last one—the quarterfinals of the state tournament. Yeah, that was a blow.
But we won two tournament championships. One was the biggest high-school basketball tournament west of the Mississippi at that time. Then we won our league, and we were undefeated all the way through. We won twenty-five games before the playoffs, and then twenty-seven games in a row.
The whole idea is this: We see what we are to be, and the Lord gives us—or begins to build—a highway in our hearts to say, “I can travel this highway.”
You go step by step. You reach the destination not by being translated all the way to the end, but by going through the life that brings you to the place where you stand before God in Zion, complete.
That is my parable. This is the way we are brought through.
But there are a couple of other things I want to bring up. The hope we had of being champions was not sure. The hope God gives us is sure. It is a sure hope.
That does not mean we do not have to go through things. But the end is sure. As Christians, we must see that this hope has been secured for us.
Sure means that it is certain and secure. Why is it certain and secure? Because the author of this hope is God.
Hope is a double-edged sword. Hope is the thing we are hoping for, but it is also the One who will bring us there.
We have the hope of that championship, but we also have hope—the trust—in the One who is leading us to it. We trust Him implicitly. And this God is sovereign.
When I think of God’s sovereignty, more often than not I think of Him overruling things. He overrules a government. He overrules a circumstance. He overrules a weakness I might have. He overrules my enemies and their designs on me. That is how I mostly think of God’s sovereignty.
That is part of His sovereignty. But there is an aspect of God’s sovereignty that does not overrule.
Instead of overruling, He acts to bring us through things—obstacles, things that are against us. He does not necessarily remove them from our path, but He brings us through them.
We overcome these things because of the hope that is within us and the God who has given us that hope. Notice I am tying them together. We have the hope, but hope alone does not get us there. It is hope in the One who has given us the hope. That is what brings us through to the hope given. Tongue twister.
For example, when Jesus went to the cross for us and for His Father, death was not overruled. God did not overrule death. He did not let Jesus be on the cross and say, “Okay, that’s enough. You’re willing.”
No. Death took Jesus into itself and kept Him there for three days. Death was not overruled.
But on the third day, Jesus Christ overcame death through the resurrection. It is a big difference.
Death is not overruled; it is overcome in victory. That is why: “O death, where is thy sting?” This is why I talked last time about the hope of resurrection. We do not fear death anymore. We do not fear man. Death has no hold on us because through Christ we overcome death, even if we die physically.
That is where all those martyrs I was talking about come in—the ones who went to the stake, the gallows, or the firing squad. They went not frightened about dying, but knowing they were going to meet the Lord, be in His presence, and share in His glory.
We can see this aspect of God’s sovereignty in the life of Joseph. Joseph was given a hope, and to him that hope was sure because God gave him that dream twice. It was not just a fluke one time. He gave it to him again. He said, “This is true. This is real. This is really going to happen.”
Joseph bragged about his hope. Okay, that is what most of us do—we brag about things. But his hope was challenged by so many contrary circumstances.
The ill will of his brothers challenged it. “This guy is going to rule over us? Let’s kill him and see if he rules over us.” He was sold into slavery. “Okay, let’s see him rule over us as a slave. Ain’t going to happen.”
He was thrown into prison. He was forgotten. Remember the cupbearer who said, “I’ll remember you before Pharaoh”? He forgot him for two years. Oops.
It was not that everything was contrary, because during this time Joseph knew God was blessing him. He knew God’s favor during that time of trial, during that time of contrariness. He knew he still had God’s favor.
What a wonderful thing that is to help you go through things—to know that you have the favor of God on you while you are going through things that are so contrary, things that scream out, “If God really cared for you, if God really is going to bring this hope about, these things would not be happening.”
But no, he went through them.
God saw him through all these things, through to the throne of Egypt, where he sat on the throne of Egypt. It is an amazing thing: from slave to throne.
When Joseph was sold into slavery, I think he was seventeen. When he gave Pharaoh the interpretation of his dreams, he was thirty. When he first saw his brothers after two years of famine, he was thirty-seven. That is a long time, is it not?
Yet did the hope come true? Was the hope a true hope? Was it a secure hope? Yes—by God’s doing, by God’s sovereignty.
In this whole process, a transformation took place in Joseph, just like the transformation we are looking forward to. That transformation showed him that the hope given to him was not just for him. It was not just to be lavished on him; it was for a purpose.
The purpose was that God wanted to save many people alive. In Genesis 50:20, when his brothers thought he was going to come down hard on them after Jacob was buried, he said:
And as for you, ye meant evil against me;
but God meant it for good,
to bring to pass, as it is this day,
to save much people alive.
The good God meant was not that Joseph would sit on the throne. It was that He might save many people alive—and that included his brothers, who had done him wrong.
What a transformation of heart for Joseph. As a little kid, he was thinking, “Yeah, I’m on top of the world.” But through all those things, God transformed him into a humble man—a humble man through whom God could show His compassion. Joseph embraced the role he had there. That was the spirit of this man made perfect.
Sometimes it is not our circumstances that are against our hope being realized. Sometimes it is just us—our own failures, our own propensity to sin, our own falling.
In thinking about this, consider the apostle Peter.
The apostle Peter had a hope, and it was not just to be a fisher of men. In Luke 22:30, when they were arguing about who was greatest, the Lord said that the greatest would be servant. This was at the Last Supper. He also said to them:
That ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom;
and ye shall sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
That was an expectation for Peter. Wow, what a glorious thing, huh? Sitting on twelve thrones and judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
But by the end of the chapter, he had denied his Lord three times. He did not even get out of the chapter.
Three times he denied his Lord, and it says he went out and wept bitterly. What a bitter pill to swallow.
Our own inadequacy, our own self-strength—the very thing we thought would carry us through—can be the very thing that keeps us from going through. What a bitter pill to swallow. No spoonful of sugar helps that pill go down. Nothing.
That is why he wept bitterly. It was, “If I cannot do it, how can it be done? I am hopeless.”
But hallelujah! God has given us a great high priest. A great high priest.
As our High Priest, we see Jesus going before us into the presence of God the Father, taking His blood as a propitiation for sin and presenting it before God the Father in that heavenly sanctuary, sealing our forgiveness for our sins and thus sealing our redemption.
Again, this is the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God is not that He overruled sin. He does not overrule it by saying, “Well, I am going to make a new law, and that way it will override this, because I could do it. I am sovereign.”
He does not do that.
What He does is take sin and judge it in the flesh, in Jesus Christ on the cross, where He suffered and died.
What He says is, “The wages of sin are just. It means death. I will pay sin its just wages.” That is the sovereignty of God. “I will pay sin its just wages.”
In doing that, the debt is paid in full, and the account with sin is settled forever. Forever. Yes, praise the Lord, it is settled forever.
This is one of the things we really need to grasp. I know we want so much, after sinning, to do penance. “I must do some works to prove to God that I really am sorry for my sins.”
We were studying the prodigal son—or Jerry would correct me and say, “the profligate son.” The son rehearsed before he came:
Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight:
I am no more worthy to be called thy son:
make me as one of thy hired servants.
When the prodigal gets home and his father sees him, he gets as far as saying, “I have sinned against heaven and in your sight. I am no longer worthy to be your son.” The rest of it—“Make me one of your servants”—he never gets a chance to say.
Read it. He never had a chance to say it. Why? Because the father embraced him and took him to himself.
That is with us. If we could only see—as I think Gunther read this morning—it was God’s good pleasure to adopt us. It was His good pleasure.
Oh, could we see how pleasurable it is for Him to bring us to Himself through the blood of Christ? This is not something He is saying, “Oh, I’ve got to do this.” No, He is rejoicing, just like the father in the parable. He is saying, “We must make merry.”
That is so opposite to us. “No, no, I have to do penance. I have to do the twelve labors of Hercules before I get in here.”
No. The Father welcomes us in through the blood of Christ.
The blood of Christ is the great means of recovery. It is the great means of restoring us—not just to God, but to the hope He has given us. The blood of Christ can never be an elementary thing. It is a magnificent thing.
We have been reading The Normal Christian Life. We can never say, “Well, I am past needing the blood of Christ. That is for young Christians.” No. It is for all of us forever.
We will never outlive our need for the blood of Christ.
Isn’t it interesting that when you go into Revelation, what do you see? You always see a Lamb as though it had been slain. Why? Because the blood of Christ ever speaks.
When Jesus rose from the dead, what do you see? His wounds. His wounds are there.
Charles Wesley wrote:
Five bleeding wounds He bears,
Received on Calvary;
They pour effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me.
What a wonderful thing has been given to us. We have a High Priest who does not take a lamb, but brings His own offering—an offering of His own blood—before the Father.
That blood is a propitiation. That is the blood that atones for us. That is the only blood that atones for us. It is the blood that cleanses our conscience and allows us freely now to come before God.
A clean conscience. It is nice to be forgiven, but it is even better, having been forgiven, to have your conscience clear because of the blood of Christ—not because I made up for it, but because of the blood of Christ, the blood of Another shed for me.
As High Priest, He intercedes for us. When Peter said, “I’ll be there for You, Lord,” Jesus said, “Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat.”
There is that sovereignty of God again, allowing the demand of Satan to be fulfilled. Peter was, for three days, sifted as wheat. I do not even want to enter into what he had to go through in his own heart and mind. But some of us have gone through things that, to us, are just that bad.
But Jesus said:
But I made supplication for thee,
that thy faith fail not:
and do thou, when once thou hast turned again,
establish thy brethren.
Satan has demanded this of you, but I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail, that you will come through. And when you have come through, strengthen your brethren.
Wow. God has given us a great High Priest who intercedes. Thank God for help from heaven—not merely help that came down from heaven, but One who came down from heaven, died, rose again, ascended, and still pleads for us in heaven.
What a wonderful Savior we have been given.
This is the mercy of God, and this is the mercy that secures that hope: “I will not let this poor ransomed sinner die.”
How wonderful it is to know that we are secured not only by an offering, but by the prayers of an ever-living High Priest who has on His heart the will and pleasure of His Father and also the hope of us.
He carries us on His heart, and not only on His heart, but on His shoulders, because the names of those twelve tribes are on His shoulders. He bears us before God. How wonderful.
He is able to bear us before God—all that we are.
Now, hope is also an anchor. I am just about done here.
There are two ways an anchor was used. There could be more, but I saw two.
First, an anchor keeps you moored. “Moored” means it keeps you at the dock. John gave a message years ago, and I still have it on my refrigerator: “Don’t drift.” Remember that?
An anchor keeps you from drifting. It keeps you from going this way or that way. But you also want to be moored during a storm.
A lot of shipwreck comes from a tidal surge. If you watch a hurricane, it brings boats miles inland, and they are all cracked up. So hope, as an anchor, keeps you moored in the harbor during a storm.
An example of this mooring is Margaret Barber’s hymn, “Weighed and Found Wanting.” It is in our hymnal. It is a story about a boat, and the boat is a metaphor for her—or for Christians—that has weathered a storm.
After going through such seas and such a storm—the trials of life she went through, which were devastating for her and ruined her reputation—she had to leave the mission society she was with. Her reputation was railroaded. It was a hard thing.
When she went back to China, she went on her own, almost disgraced, you could say, but in the will of God. Yet she inferred, “My hope is secure because I am anchored to infinity.”
An anchor ties us to Someone greater than me—greater than my trial, greater than my ambitions, greater than my hopes. I am anchored to infinity. I am anchored to an infinite and living God.
In other words, she is saying, “If not for these very things that I went through—not that I had to go through them, but that I did go through them—I would never have known not only the vastness of the power of God to keep me through trial, but the depth of His compassion and commitment to me in bringing me through to His end.”
Sometimes we are lost in the power of God. Do not let us be lost in the power of God to the exclusion of His great compassion and commitment to see us through.
Oh, how God loves us:
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
What a wonderful God we have. She was brought to see this anchoring. She was anchored to Him in complete and utter trust—or, as Glenn said this morning, unreasonable trust.
There is no reason for it other than what? The love of God for me—that He would bring me into His very purposes. How wonderful is this God who has saved us and given us hope.
Also, an anchor is used to draw a ship through a narrow channel into a harbor. You could not trust the ship to get through the narrow passage, so they would send a boat ahead with an anchor.
It would go through that channel and put the anchor on some rock strong enough to hold. Then the boat would be pulled into harbor.
The anchor is not just something to hold; it is something to draw.
We have a Forerunner who has gone through the veil. We can look at the veil as a number of things: the veil as flesh, the veil that keeps a man out of the Holy of Holies. But a lot of times, I think the veil is what is unknown ahead of us.
We do not know what is ahead of us.
But we have a Savior who has gone through everything that a man could conceive of going through. He knew loss. Joseph, His foster father—the one who acted as His father—died. He knew the loss.
He knew things against Him. His brothers did not believe in Him. Herod was after Him. The Pharisees and scribes did not agree with His teaching; they were against Him. He knew things against Him in every way.
He knew the powers of the heavens against Him—Satan, demons, and all the things He encountered. He knew sickness because He took it from people. He knew death because He suffered it.
He knows the whole unknown, and He has gone through the veil of unknown for us to say, “I made it through. I have overcome.”
Remember, last time I talked about the Transfiguration. He could have walked right into heaven, but it was not the will of God for Him to go to heaven without bringing many sons to glory.
This is the way, as Forerunner, He brings many sons to glory. He goes ahead of us. He trod the pilgrim way that we are to tread. He goes through that, and He brings us to its end.
I will close with this: What effect does hope have on the one who hopes?
It is not that we say, “Oh, it is secured and everything, so I will just relax now and let Him pull me through.” He secures it, but I think the men in the ship still pull the ship in because it is very weighty.
He who has this hope purifies himself. Let’s clarify “purifies.” We think, “I have got to be better. I have got to be better.” That is not what it is saying.
Let’s look at it this way: He who has this hope makes himself ready.
Have you ever heard of a hope chest? In the old days, it was not only known as a hope chest; it was called a glory box. That is an interesting term, is it not? Glory box.
Hope chests are not new. They have been around since the Renaissance, and some people say even before that. My mom had a hope chest. It was made out of cedar.
Cedar is so fragrant. It is a beautiful smell. It even overcomes mothballs. You open that thing and you do not smell the mothballs; the first thing you smell is the cedar. It is a fragrant thing. It is a fragrance of life.
The other thing is that cedar is resistant to insects that would cause it to rot.
The thing about a hope chest was this: especially in our culture, if you went back to the 1800s, women who were looking ahead to their wedding had the hope of being married.
They would buy a chest like this, have it made, or maybe their dad or brother would make it. She would fill it with everything she deemed important to her anticipated marriage.
Some women would make their own wedding dress. As they made it, they would put it in that hope chest, sometimes taking it out and adding something they thought of later. They put it in there in anticipation of that day.
Then they looked ahead to life. “I am not just going to have the ceremony. I am going to live with my husband. What do I need?”
She might buy fine china, tablecloths, sheets, silverware, and all sorts of odds and ends she would need. She might keep little knickknacks that meant something to her, things she wanted to bring into her marriage. Sometimes she would bring in an album of family pictures and photographs to remember her heritage.
All this was stored away. When I say “stored away,” I do not mean like the lost ark being put away in Washington, D.C., with all those other things.
Every once in a while, she would come back and open it up and look in it. By looking in it, there was a reviving of that hope.
“I am looking at the dress I am going to wear. Oh, this is going to be wonderful. When we have his parents over for the first time, I am going to set this china before them on this linen. Our bed is going to be made up with these sheets.”
The whole thing is, she is looking forward. Her hope is renewed.
It is stored and put away in preparation for that day. Preparation—not storage. There is a difference.
Storage is what you find in my attic. I still have the kids’ Legos. But this is preparation—preparation for what is to come.
The waiting for that day was not a passive wishing, but an active participation in what was to come.
It was a glorious day when I got married. To see my wife come down the aisle in her gown, she was radiant. Radiant. Her gown was purchased by her mom. Radiant.
This is what the Lord is looking for: a radiant bride, prepared for her account.
In Revelation, it talks about the ornamentation of the bride’s gown as the righteous acts of the saints.
And it was given unto her that she should array herself in fine linen, bright and pure:
for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Oh, Lord, how wonderful it is to know that we can adorn the gown—not for merit, but out of love for the One who is coming to marry us. What a wonderful thing.
Our hope is sure, and we draw near in anticipation of it. May it become the desire in our own hearts for this hope to be realized.
May there be that highway to Zion created in our hearts for that better day ahead.
This is our hope:
Every one of them appeareth before God in Zion.
And I just want to add to that: appearing before God in Zion complete. Complete, nothing lacking—the spirits of just men made perfect.
Amen. Let it be so.
I just want to end with these few verses. I love hymns because they say things that you cannot say, because these people have experienced something that I have not.
In number 863, right next to the one I read last time by Darby, there is one by Frances Bevan, who wrote children’s biographies, including one on the Wesleys. It is called “No More in Earthen Vessels.”
Verse 4 starts out—this is talking about the glory of Jesus:
Undimmed in that great vessel,
The glory of that light,
Illumining with its fullness
The earth in radiance bright;
All His new creation
God’s glory there shall see,
The vessel for that shining
The Lamb’s own bride shall be.
Spirits of just men made perfect. Oh, Lord, make this real. Bring that to our hearts and our minds more and more.
Father, we thank You for such a hope that is ours. Not merely that we have such a hope, but, Lord, that You have secured it for us.
You are the One who can bring us all the way through because of Who You are—Your sovereignty, Your power and might, but also Your commitment and Your great love toward us.
You have secured for us what is unimaginable, something we could never have had on our own, should we have a thousand lives to live.
Oh, Lord, we thank You. We thank You for the anchor You have given us, that anchors us, holds us to You forever, and draws us to You, that we might be complete in You.
Bring us through all the things that are mysteries to us, things we cannot see ahead of us. Oh, Lord, You have gone through as our Forerunner to bring us through.
Oh, how we praise You. How we thank You. We have such hope, and we have such a God who gives it to us.
We thank You, in Jesus’ name. Amen.