A Certain Hope for Tomorrow // A Life Eternal, Part 5

Life without hope for tomorrow is sad and dark and lonely. If God is God, if He really loves us, then surely, He’d want us to have hope for the future. Wouldn’t He?

Have you ever been in a place where you’ve lost all hope? Hope as it turns out is a precious, precious commodity. We all need things in our lives to look forward to; to hope in – the deep sense that we have a future; we know where we are going. When there’s no future, it’s tragic; when you lose all hope, well, it feels like life’s over.

And that’s the problem with death, we all die at some point. Some die young, others watch their bodies progressively give up the ghost. But if God’s God; if He really loves us the way the Bible says He does, then hope would have to be very high on His list because the last thing He’d want is for us to experience hopelessness. And it turns out that hope is very high on His list. That’s what this whole "resurrection of Jesus Christ" thing is all about.

It’s a funny thing, when things are going really bad in our lives, hope evaporates very quickly. And look at the twelve disciples: over and over again Jesus told them that He would be crucified and rise again; He told them over and over and over again. Yet, when it happened, they scattered to the four winds. They deserted Him and they completely lost sight of His promise – the promise of the resurrection. Actually, most of them needed convincing when, in fact, it happened. On that Easter morning, a lot of them went, “Really?” and it’s not surprising, I mean, it’s a pretty hard thing to come to grips with.

In a sense we are just the same. Life takes a turn for the worse and the first thing to go out the window is hope. It’s kind of natural. In the Old Testament, in the Book of First Chronicles chapter 29 verse 15, it says:

Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

I want to get in you face right now for a bit because we need some good teaching on hope. When we put our trust in Jesus in the good times, what happens is we lay down our lives – we love Him, we adore Him, we worship Him, we follow Him with our lives. I tell you what happens when the storm clouds start rolling in, something strange and new and wonderful happens in our hearts.

This light of hope in Jesus Christ shines out and it won’t go out and you know, I didn’t understand that until I read this small verse in the New Testament, in the book of First Peter chapter 1 and verse 3, and Peter writes this:

Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ because by His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for us who have been protected by the power of God through faith, for a salvation ready to be revealed in that last time. In this we rejoice even though for now, for a little while, we have had to suffer various trials.

Now the people that Peter was writing to here, they were being killed, they were being tarred and feathered, they were being set alight, they were being tortured; they were being thrown to the lions. These people were gong through serious stuff and Peter writes, “It doesn’t matter what you are going through – it doesn’t matter – because you have a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Over and over again, the New Testament talks about Jesus being the first born from among the dead, in other words it points back to His resurrection. The death of Jesus is a historical fact but so is His resurrection. Death couldn’t hold Him down. And when we put our trust in Him, that’s what we put our hope in – it’s a certain hope.

Jesus was raised from the dead by God and one day when you and I breathe our last breath and our body give up the ghost, we will stand before Him and we will have that same resurrection – an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, being kept in heaven for us, who right now are being protected by the power of God through faith for what He has got to give us in that time.

You know what our problem is? Kind of, sometimes we know that the resurrection is an historical fact; we know that in our heads but we spend so much time hoping in a pay rise or some temporal bauble here on earth or on a new car, we loose sight of the living hope we have through the resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus was raised from the dead; He’s the first born from among the dead; the first of many. And that promise is for you and for me if we believe in Jesus Christ and we don’t loose sight of that living hope we have through the resurrection of Jesus. One day when I cast off this mortal body I will stand for ever and ever in His presence and have eternal life. That is rock solid and you know the basis of that promise? The resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Look at your life at the moment – the things that are going well for you and the things that aren’t – the things that you would want to change. And the reality is some of them we can’t change; maybe God will change them and maybe He won’t; I don’t know and you don’t know but in the meantime, He wants us to live a life of certain hope. And you know, what God has for us for all eternity, just doesn’t compare with anything we can have here on earth that we can see and touch today. It doesn’t compare with a certain hope of eternal life in Jesus.

The Apostle John gives us a revelation of that in his book, Revelation, where we get a glimpse of this. He writes this:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, because the first had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw a holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men and He will live with them and they will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God. And He will wipe every tear from their eyes; there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old things have passed away.

Nothing else comes anywhere close to that and we spend life wandering around in the weeds and down in the murky mire and God says, "Look, look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ." This is God’s call to set our eyes and our hearts and everything we are, all of our hope on this heavenly promise because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In Colossians, in the New Testament; the Book of Colossians chapter 3 verse 1, Paul writes this:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are here on earth because you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life, is revealed then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

If you believe in the resurrection, seek the things that are above, set your mind and your eyes and your heart and your hopes and everything on heavenly things – on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
It is time today to start living life from a different perspective, from an eternal perspective. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is something that gives us a certain hope – a certain hope in eternal life, in our resurrection – in the future that God is keeping safe, undefiled, perfect for you and me, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.