The Refuge for Hope
Heb. 6:11-20
Intro.:
1. In 1854, Garibaldi, the man who brought unification
to a fragmented Italy of his day, was imprisoned and stayed
there for three years. He kept a diary and wrote, "...
I contemplate the lapse of time, unmarked by events and it
seems brief; one day does not differ from another; one always
sees and suffers the same things. Here time is like a shoreless
sea, without sun or moon or stars--immense and monotonous.
Many of the prisoners who have been here for thirty years say,
when they speak of what they did or saw thirty years ago. "Not
long ago I saw this, I did that." I also say, "Not long myself and my soul and this poor torn heart, when I reckon up
woes and uncover the wounds which reach even to the depths of my soul, oh, then these three years seem to me infinite!
I cannot recall the few pleasures and the many griefs I had
Before life. The griefs of these three endless years seem all my life. Three years, and if I have to say, ten, twenty, thirty?
I shall never say it for I shall not live so long.
....My spirit is tainted; I feel all the hideousness , the horror,
the terror of crime; had I remorse, I should think I too were
a criminal. My spirit is being undone. It seems to me as if
my hand also were foul with blood and theft. I forget virtue
beauty.
The dismal picture that Garibaldi draws indicates something
hopelessness. The phrase "my spirit is being undone" points
up the disintegration of hope, and the turn to hopelessness.
3. Poets and other writers have been impressed by hope.
Cicero, 104-46 B.C. seems to be the father of the oft-quoted
statement of modern times, "Where there is life there is hope."
Cicero said this concerning the sick. In modern times Alexander
Pope wrote that "hope springs eternal in the human breast."
It is not enough to talk about hope isolated from an object or goal.
A sick person does not merely hope, but hopes for
recovery, for health. A poor man does not merely have hope,
but he hopes for a change of fortune and wealth. A man goes
into business with hope--for a return, a fortune, an adventure.
4.The Christian faith has a lot to say about hope. Hope is directed to a goal. The word hope (elpis) in Greek means
joyful and confident expectation of eternal salvation.
We hope in God that he will save us, we hope in God for
life after death. Hope is also related to an unseen.
A young person hopes to find a spouse who will
fulfill the needs of life for companionship. At present that mate is not to be seen. Life is a search for the goal.
And it is carried on in hope of fulfillment.
5. The hope in our passage is related to a desire. "We
desire each of you to show the same earnestness in realizing
the full assurance of hope until the end. The basis for the
assurance of hope is found in three facts.
I. Christian Hope is based on God's promise. 14-18
1. God promised Abraham... Around the year 2000 B.C., God
spoke to a 75 year old man in the city of Haran, about 300
miles north east of Damascus. The word was to leave Haran
and go to what is now Palestine. The promise was a land and
descendants that would make up a great nation. Abraham's
wife was 65 and had been childless all her life. That
promise appears incredible, but Abraham left Haran and journeyed to Palestine. Twenty four years elapsed after this before the real significant event occurred: Abraham's wife had a son and his name was Isaac. All that Abraham had to go on for
25 years was a promise. All else was against the promise.
Abraham was old, Sarah was old and no children had been born
in the years of their marriage. All seemed hopeless, except
for hope itself.
2. The nature of the promise is an unusual kind. In human
courts we make people take oaths that they will tell the truth
and not lie. We admit the character of people is such
that they will lie, and the oath is designed to emphasize the
gravity of what they do as well as the penalty of lying.
But everyone once in a while we come across people who reject oath taking and declare that a person's character vouches his word. The point in our Scripture is that God's character is such that he will not lie in his promises, but on top
of that, God takes an oath that his promises are sure.
Now, our salvation rests on that promise and oath of God. There is no possible way of getting more assurance. God is the last court of appeal, and he takes an oath on top.
3. A hundred years ago Tom Moore was a poet and had just
married a beautiful girl, Bessie Dyke. Theirs seemed an
idylic marriage, a story book beginning. Not too long after
they were married Tom had to be away on a trip to Italy.
Bessie was feverish and Tom did not want to leave, but it was
important for him to go. Anxious about the fever, he left a
doctor and a nurse to be in constant attendance until he returned.
It was seven weeks sailing the ship and without any communication and then Tom returned. As the young poet went directly to his home, he found the doctor waiting for him there. The doctor was saying that there is no need to be worried, but he stood barring the door to the bedroom. Tom demanded an explanation. The speech which the doctor had rehearsed came out painfully.
Bessie had smallpox. The crisis was past, she was recovering.
But it had left her once-lovely face scarred, mercilessly. And
she did not want to see her husband again. Tom gasped
unbelieving. Then he shoved the doctor aside and walked directly
into the dark room. He heard breathing, sobs, and the heartbreak of his bride. He knelt beside the bed and began to talk. Calmly at first, then he began to plead with her, but it was no use.
With tears in her voice, she repeated over and over again, No,
he must not open the blinds, No, you must not open the blinds.
Fearful that his love, more precious to her than her life,
might fade with the transient beauty which had fled, she insisted he must leave now, go away, never see her again.
When she was near hysteria, Tom gave up. He went to his study
down the hall. Sometime between that afternoon and the
following dawn Tom Moore decided that he would try to reach
thru to her again...with the gift that brought them together.
While it was yet dark in the morning, he went to her room
and in the darkness of the morning sky he sang the words
which he had written. When he had finished there was a stillness
in that room. A long moment passed and then Bessie got out of bed, drew back the shutter and flung aside the
drapery. As he knelt beside her bed, motionless, she
reached for the flint and lighted the bedside taper and the room was suddenly radiant with the awakening sun and the dancing flame. As the light flooded the pock marked face Tom stumbled to his feet and flung himself into her arms and at once they knew that they were together and nothing else would ever matter evermore.
The words that Thomas Moore sang were words that we
seem never to forget:
"Believe me, if all those endearing young charms
which I gaze on so fondly today, were to change
by tomorrow and fleet in my arms. Like fairy gifts
fading away. Thou wouldst still be adored--as this
moment thou art. Let thy loveliness fade as it
will, and around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart
would entwine itself verdantly still." God‘s promises are sure, unfading, and his
love is expressed in these promises. Comfort yourself
in this hope.
II. Christian Hope Anchors the spirit. v.l9.
l. Some of you are probably boating enthusiasts and I
am about to show some of my ignorance. My understanding of
anchors is very limited. A boat, if it is to be anchored,
must drop a line with attachments down to grab the body
of the waterbed. It would not appear to me that 3 ft
line with an anchor would do much good in twelve feet of
water with a current. Whatever be the case with normal anchors
the illustration here is different. The anchor of our spirits
move beyond the inner shrine of the Holy of Holies into
the presence of God. We are told, by implication, that
our spirits are anchored to the Rock of the Universe.
2. Life is like a rough sea and we need anchors.
Without a solid anchor a ship drifts into dangerous waters
and chances running aground and damage and destruction.
Even if one drifted, you find that you are not where you
want to be when you want to be somewhere. Life needs to be
anchored in God.
3. Once upon a time there was a lily which stood in a secluded
spot beside a little purling stream and was well known to some
nettles and a few other tiny flowers in the neighborhood. The lily,
according to the veracious description of the Gospel, was arrayed
more beautifully than Solomon in all his glory and was as care-free and glad as the day was long. Time slipped by blissfully and
unobserved, like the running stream which murmurs and vanishes.
But it happened now that a little bird came one day and paid a visit to the lily, it came again the next day, then remained away for
many days before it came back again, which to the lily strange and inexplicable--inexplicable that the bird did not remain in the same place like the tiny flowers, and strange that the bird could be so capricious. But as it often happens it fell more and more in love with the bird because it was so capricious.
This little bird was a naughty bird. Instead of putting itself
in the lily‘s place, instead of rejoicing in its loveliness and
rejoicing in its innocent blissfulness, the bird wanted to give
itself an air of importance by feeling its freedom and letting the
lily feel its bondage. And not only this, but the little bird was
at the same time chatty and reported all sorts of things, true
and untrue, about other places where lilies far more splendid were
to be found in great abundance, where there was an atmosphere of peace and gaiety, a fragrance, a splendor of colour, a chorus of birds, surpassing all descriptions. So the bird reported, and every one of its reports ended with the remarked, deeply humiliating to the lily, that in comparison with glory, it looked like nothing at all,
indeed that it was so insignificant that it was questionable what
right it had to be called a lily.
Then the lily became troubled. The more it heard the bird say,
the more troubled it became. It no longer slept quietly by night,
nor awakened with gladness in the morning. It felt itself bound
and imprisoned, it found the murmur of the stream tiresome and the day long. It began now to be concerned with itself and the condition of its life, in self-commiseration -so long were the days. "It may be all very well, it said to itself, to hear the brook
murmur now and then by way of variety--but to hear the same thing eternally day in and day out is too tiresome." It might
be agreeable enough, it said to itself, to be once in a while
in a secluded place and alone, but to be forgotten in this way
a whole life long to be without any other society but the society
of stinging-nettles, which surely are not proper society for a lily-
it is not to be endured. And then to make so poor an appearance as I do, said the lily to itself--
to be so insignificant as the little bird says I am--Oh, why did I
not come into being under other conditions? Oh, why did I
not become a crown imperial? For the little bird had related
to it that among all lilies the crown imperial was regarded
as the most beautiful and was the envy of all other lilies. The
lily noticed that unfortunately its trouble increasing, but
then it talked to itself reasonably--alas, not so reasonably as to
banish trouble from its mind, but in such a way as to persuade
itself that its trouble was reasonable. "For, it said, my wish
is surely not an unreasonable wish, I do not require to be something I am not, not a bird, for example, my wish is merely to be a splendid lily, or I might say, even the most splendid.
All this time the little bird flew back and forth and with every visit it made, and with every intervening absence, the lily's restlessness increased. At last it confided itself entirely
to the bird. One evening they agreed that a change should be brought about the next morning and an end be put to its distress. Early the next morning came the little bird; with its beak it cut the soil away from the lily's root so that it might be free. When this had been accomplished the bird took the lily under its wing and
flew away. The plan was for the bird to fly off with the lily to
the place where the splendid lilies bloomed, there to help it to get
planted, to see if with the change of place and the new
environment the lily might not succeed in becoming a splendid lily in company with the many, or perhaps even a crown imperial envied by all the others.
Alas, on the way the lily withered. If the troubled lily had been
had been content with being a lily, then it would not have become troubled.
If it had not become troubled, then it would have remained where it stood--where it stood in all its loveliness. if it had stayed there, it would have been the very lily the person talked about on Sunday when he repeated the words of the Gospel: Consider the lilies; I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
The lily is man. The naughty little bird is the restless thought
of comparison which roves far and wise, unstable and capricious, and culls unwholesome knowledge about invidious differences. The little bird is the seducer...
Life is filled with comparisons and frustrations. Man‘s life needs a tap-root that is stable and sure, like the anchor of the ship. Without being anchored, or rooted, man‘s life will wither also. Christian Hope is an anchor of our spirit.
III. Hope’s pledge is Jesus, the High Priest. v.2O.
l. One of the most tender demonstrations of hope is seen
in the giving of a ring to a beloved. The ring signifies that
two people are committed to one another for marriage. Marriage may be months or years away, but the ring is a way of saying,
My life is yours in hope. Engagement is a promise, the ring
is a sign or pledge in token of that promise.
God has promised and he has given us a token of
that salvation--Jesus the high priest who is at the right
hand of God, our intercessor. The appearance of Jesus, his
death and resurrection, all point up the pledge that God
has given us.
2. Think for a moment how a ring works. Back in the days
when I was allowed to be interest in girls, I would see
some attractive girl that seemed fascinating. One of the
first features I would look at was our left hand. If
she wore a wedding ring it was obvious she wasn't in the
market for a date. If she wore an engagement ring, at
least that might yet indicate a possibility, but not likely.
The ring in either case was an emblem or pledge of a relationship
The pledge was important to her and to me. For her, it meant
her actions were directed. She was not available. For
me, the pledge sign indicated that it was probably useless
to pursue the matter any further.
3. In another context one may speak of earnest money.
Recently, I was trying to sell a house we own in Emporia.
Since I was very sympathetic to the party buying it, I requested
only a token pledge of earnest money. The earnest money is
assurance that they will go thru with the deal. As it turned
out, they changed their mind and I had to keep the earnest
money for the rent loss. In real estate the earnest money
backs up your word of commitment.
In the understanding of Scripture, God has given us
an earnest gift--his son Jesus. The earnest is more than
equal to our net worth and investment. It is so great an
earnest gift that God will not back out of the deal.
Our hope is based on this pledge.
Conclusion:
l. God has placed hope before us. V. l8. talks about fleeing
to God for refuge. When a tornado heads toward a community
residents flee for shelter. Finding refuge may be a problem.
Success at finding refuge means the difference between life
and death.
Daily we face the rough storms of life. Have you fled to
God the refuge, the rock of salvation?
On April 10, l9l2 the Royal Mail ship Titanic left
from Southampton, England. It proceeded to Cherbourg, France
where passengers and mails were taken aboard and the voyage
resumed to Queenstown, Ireland, and from there across the
Atlantic. Four days at sea brought in into contact with
an iceberg that ripped the platting off the ship ten feet
below the water level. It carried 2223 passengers and crew.
It also carried 3560 life belts in cabins and berths.
But over l50O perished because they did not have
life-belts. I cannot tell you why they did not have them,
whether it was disbelief that the ship would sink, disorientation of what to do, separation from families and trying to
find families, or what. But they perished.
Does this not speak to us relating the Scripture...?
Things may appear to be smooth sailing for the moment.
There is no need of God. But when danger comes how will
it go then. Will you be so set on believing nothing will
happen that you cannot turn to the refuge in the storm?
Will you be so confused by the danger to life that you will
be dis-oriented?
2. The Bible says, today is the day of salvation.
Today is the day of hone. Today is the day for putting
your life in the safe care of God. |