Turn with me back in your Bibles
to Zechariah chapter 9. I got cold to read that because
there are two. Three people that we should study very closely
in the scriptures and obviously the number one one to study always
in everything about him is our Lord Jesus Christ and we fix
our eyes on him who is the author and finisher of our faith. But
the other two that should be of particular interest among
all of the ones that should be of interest to in the scriptures
is Abraham who is the father of the faithful. And if you are
a child of God and a son of the faithful one, the Lord Jesus
Christ, then Abraham's life of faith and Abraham's life of hope
should be incredibly important. And Paul is the apostle to the
Gentiles, and he and his life and his conversion are Abraham trusted God. We'll look at those verses again
just in a little while, but I want us to look again at this amazing
verse in Zechariah chapter 9 verse 12. What an amazing description of
the work of God, this triumphant saviour who comes riding, this
ruling and reigning God who rules and reigns over all things. He
says of his daughters, he says of his people, that they have been set free,
sent forth prisoners out of a pit, but then he says, you turn to
the stronghold. You turn, verse 12, turn to the
stronghold. You prisoners of hope. You prisoners of hope. It's almost
embarrassing to think how often we use that word hope, isn't
it? How many times when you're sort of writing an email or you're
sending a message or you're on a phone call you go, I'm hope,
you're hope, you're hope, you're hope, you're hope. We're always
hoping, aren't we? And we're always, when we look
to the future, we're always looking with regard to some hope that
might come to pass. And those of us who have written
it thousands of times and said it millions of times know full
well that almost invariably it doesn't come to pass. But here
is a glorious description of the children of God. They are prisoners of hope. And one of the lovely things
about the Lord Jesus Christ is the the activities and that which
is communicated from him to us and us back to him, like his
love and like his faithfulness and like his hope, they're actually
descriptions of him. Hope in the Bible is almost invariably
a noun. And so what this verse is saying,
he says, turn you the refuge. That's the Lord Jesus Christ
is the refuge. You turn to the refuge when? Always. Why? Because there's no refuge outside
of him. Turn you to the stronghold. The Lord Jesus Christ has a people
in this world who have been and in their flesh are prisoners
of the pit. And then by his delivery of them,
his great deliverance, his great redemption of them, they actually
become prisoners of hope. We walk through this world now
captive to the thought, don't we? He's taken us captive to
his promises. He's taken us captive to his
promises because of who he is. And what a delightful captivity
it is. Christ is the hope of Israel
and the saviour thereof. He takes his people captive Aren't they? They are born into
this world captive. We fell in Adam and we became
captive. We became captive to Satan. We
became captive to sin. We became captive to the flesh. We became captive to the allurements
of this world. And nothing but blood, the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, can set us free from that captivity. The Blessed Saviour not only
opens the door and calls us to come to the refuge, but He actually
does it. He does it. He does it all. His
blood is the seal of the covenant. His blood is the blood of the
God of peace brought again from the Lord Jesus Christ, our great
Saviour. And He's made peace by the blood
of His Christ. His covenant blood is always,
affects your blood. There's not a drop of the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. that can ever be shed in vain
in any way at all. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
sets His people free. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
delivers us. It opens the prison door and
then it tells the prisoners to come out, to come out and to
come and to walk in liberty. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
reconciles us to God. It cleanses us. We're washed
in His blood. And that brings peace. He's made
peace by the blood of his cross. And the blood is sufficient blood. It's always sufficient. Turn
you to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today do I declare
that I will render double unto thee. turn you. All throughout the
scriptures, the people of God, like the Suleiman in Song of
Solomons, has drawn me and will run after you. We'll turn and
we will come to him, as Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 31 verse 9,
and surely after that I was turned by God, I repented and after
that I was instructed and smote upon my thigh. I was ashamed,
even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth. We are made to turn by Him. We know that the Lord must not
only make the promise and provide the hope, but He must bring us
to the place where the hope is. We are looking in hope, aren't
we? We're looking for the blessed
hope and the glorious appearing of our Saviour, The Lord Jesus
Christ, the glorious appearing of the great God and Saviour
of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a hope that this world
has, and we've expressed it so many times, but we've heard it
expressed, and there are multitudes of people that are in all sorts
of religious services of all different stripes throughout
this world, and they're all going away with some sort of hope,
aren't they? There is a hope that this world
has, and Job calls it the hope of the hypocrite, and it shall be cut off. And
how strong is the hope of the hypocrite according to the word
of God? His trust shall be as a spider's. in physical terms, but if you're
falling into the pit of hell, a spider's web will do no good. And that's why we need to be
made prisoners of he who is the hope, and prisoners of his promises. Ephesians 2 describes all of
us, isn't it? All of we Gentiles. At that time,
Ephesians 2.12, at that time you were without Christ. Being
aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel and strangers from
the Covenant of Promise, having no hope and without God in the
world, they thought they had hope. In fact, this world, especially
this atheistic, naturalistic world, it always has a hope,
isn't it? Give us time and give us money
and give us resources and we can fix the problems. We can
fix this planet. We can fix We can fix the wealth,
we can fix the givers, and they're always clinging to a hope. There's nothing more than a spider's
web, and so is so many of this religious world. They think they
have a hope. They'll find out one day that
it's the hope of a hypocrite. May the Lord protect us and preserve
us, and may the Lord cause us to see that the Lord Jesus Christ
alone is the hope. The hope of the faithful is Christ
himself. Be called prisoners of hope. We've been turned by God to the
city of refuge. that place where you can escape
the avenger of blood and you're safe in the City of Refuge and
you're provided for in the City of Refuge and you're safe in
the City of Refuge until the High Priest dies and when the
High Priest dies you're free to go home. The glory of these
promises here isn't it, is that the Great High Priest has died
and yet lives again to ensure that all of his promises and
all of his inheritance reaches all those he has designed it
for. All men are prisoners. All men
are willing prisoners, sadly, aren't they? They're either prisoners
to sin and the law, and they're bound in chains of unbelief. All men are bound. And they think
they have a freedom, but in their very thoughts of that freedom,
they're not aware of the fact that their freedom is just a
freedom in imagination. They're not free from the sovereignty
of God. They're not free from the judgment
of God. They're not free from the predestinating
purposes of God Almighty. He's working all things together
for good. I love what Paul saw himself
as a bond servant as a slave one who willingly put himself
in the position of a slave as a servant as a prisoner to his
lord is a willing bond servant one
thing about the servant is that the master rules And he has the
right, he has the right to do with us and do with his creation
as he sees fit. How glorious is the fitness of
our God towards his people. He sets them free from the pit.
He sets them free by covenant blood from his pit. Then he calls
them into the city of refuge and there he brings them these
glorious descriptions that they are prisoners of hope. The Lord Jesus Christ. in that covenant to perfectly
obey God Almighty on behalf of His people, to be perfectly obedient
to all of the requirements of God's holy law, to be perfectly
obedient to suffering all of the infinite wrath of God and
all of the sins of God's elect. who were laid on him. He is that
servant in Exodus 20 who says, I love my master, and I love
my children, and I love my wife, and I will not go through. You
take me to the doorpost of the house, and you bore my ear through
with an oar, and I'll be here forever as your servant. so that they are captive to his
words of promise. We are prisoners. Matter of who
we are prisoners to. As I said earlier, we are called
upon to hope. God says, hope thou in God, but
hope in the scriptures is a noun. He is our hope. He is our hope. I want us to
go back to Romans 4 that Col read and I want us to see the
Father of the faithful living out these glorious promises. Having been turned to the refuge. The Lord Jesus Christ having
been made a prisoner of hope. So what's the source and the
ground of your hope? You are called upon by God to
be able to give a reason for the hope that is in you. Well
Christ in you is the hope of glory. So what's the source or
the ground of our hope? Romans 4.21 being fully persuaded. This is
Abraham being fully, are you fully persuaded? I'd love to
be more fully persuaded. I'm thankful that God makes his
people persuaded. This is what he's been, fully
persuaded that what he had promised, he was able to do. Abraham was called out of Ur
of the Chaldeans, and then he was called out of Haran, north
of Israel, and he was told, he was given these remarkable promises
by God, and he was told, you just go. Where do you go? You'll find out where you go
when you get there. You just go. The source or ground of our hope
is just the word Listen to what it says of him
who, in verse 18, who against hope, with no source of hope
that he could see around him or in him, he believed in hope
that he might become the father of many nations. If you are a
son of God, you are a child of God, you have the faith of Abraham,
the faithful one. He's became the father of many
nations according to that which was spoken, so shall thy seed
be. Believing. Believing God gives us the comfort
and joy of believing in hope. See, God's glory and our comfort
in hope are inextricably bound together. And God, by taking
his people out of the pit in which there was no water, and
then making them captive to his word of promise, as he made you
captive to his word of promise, The great desire of the child
of God is to hold it more dearly, to hold it more clearly, to hold
it more passionately. But he believed what was spoken. The ground of our hope is And the word of God and the character
of God are bound together, isn't it? Listen to what verse 19 says.
And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body
now dead when he was about 100 years old, neither the deadness
of Sarah's womb. He believed and believed in hope
when there was no evidence around. In fact, all the evidence was
contrary to what the hope was and contrary to what the promise
was. There was no evidence in him, there was no evidence in
Sarah. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief,
but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. Don't you pray
that that might be our portion, brothers and sisters? Giving
glory to God. God gets glory by the faith that
he gives his people and the exercising of his faith. Verse 21, being
fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also
to perform. What He had promised, He was
able to perform. The ground of our hope is simply
the Word of God. The source of our hope is simply
the Word of God. character of God is faithful
and He will do it. This great God and Saviour who
comes triumphantly fulfilling His promises before us in Zechariah
9 and then He continues to fulfill these promises that we have in
these remarkable verses about prisoners of the pit being set
free by His blood and prisoners of hope being made captive to
Him. And our hope, our hope is captive
to the word of God's promise. Jeremiah said, in the midst of
the awful trials of being almost left alone in Jerusalem, completely
surrounded by enemies, and knowing what was laid before the people
of Israel, people of Jerusalem, and pleading with them, pleading
with them to save themselves from the destruction that was
coming upon them. And he was left, and he cried
out to God. If you read those chapters from
Jeremiah 13 through to beyond chapter 20, it's just amazing,
Jeremiah's path in this world, and how similar it was. And he says, his word is in my
heart like a fire, a fire that burns and coals, withheld, a fire that must bear
fruit. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for. Faith is the foundation. Faith
is that which has, that's what this word means, has actual existence. Faith is the confidence, the
steadfastness of things hoped for. The ground, the source of our
hope is the very word of God, and the very character of God
is bound up with that, and it comes to us by faith. Abraham
is the father of the faithful, and he received the promise. Abraham's told, like we are,
to leave this world, and to leave everything, and cleave to me. You follow me, is the command
of God to his children. You just follow me. You just
believe me. You trust your hopes in me. How
am I going to get there? That's my business, says God.
You follow me. That's what he says to Peter
on that beach before he went back to heaven. What will I do
when I get there? That's in my hands, not your How can I be fruitful and have
a promised heir? What's the answer of God? Is
anything too hard for God? Is he able? Is he able? Is your
hope based on the ability of and not anything other than what
He has promised. So many of us have had our hopes
dashed, haven't they, when we've hoped for something and we've
really, really believed that it was going to come to pass,
and then it's been just crushed before our eyes, and we come
away despairing. The prisoners of hope have their
hope based on the Word of God. They have their hope based on
the character of God. It comes to them by just simply
believing God. Is anything too hard for God?
You follow me. You leave this world and you
come to the place where I will take you and I will show you."
But when Abraham got there and he saw all of those physical
things, he knew that the real promises are spiritual promises.
That land was his. The whole lot of it was his.
Everywhere he set foot was his, by right and by promise of God. And he looked around and he said, I'm going to have a tent and
I'm going to carry and have an altar with me. And he went up
on that mountain and took Isaac up there. And I just love, you
can read it in Genesis 22, but there is hope in action, isn't
it? There is hope lived out, isn't it? He was told by God
to take his son up there and sacrifice him. And in that sacrifice,
the sacrifices were quartered. What a horrible thing to think
of before him. He had three days to think about
it, and he got up early in the morning, and when he left those
men at the foot of the mountain, he says, the lad and I are coming
back again. He had a promise from God that
through Isaac would all this seed that comes to all and lives
in all the faithful in this world throughout time, was going to
come through Isaac. The Lord Jesus Christ is pictured
in that, and the Lord Jesus Christ was going to come through the
lineage of Isaac. We're going up there, and we're
going to sacrifice, and we're coming back again. If you read
it in Hebrews 11, Abraham believed what God had said. He believed
that God was going to resurrect Isaac from the dead, and in fact,
in his mind, he did. He did. Abraham believed God,
and it was imputed. It was laid to his account for
righteousness. And that's why in Romans 4 it's
imputed for us, in verse 24, but also for us. It wasn't written
for his sake alone, this word of God and this word of promise
and this word of hope. But also, verse 24, but also
for us. also, to whom it shall be imputed
if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead,
who was delivered because of or for our offences and raised
again because of our justification. Therefore, therefore, Having
been justified, being justified, and it's in the passive sense,
it's not on account of what we have done. Having been justified,
by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein
we stand. In a world that moves and shifts
and disappoints and causes us to find no rest for the foot,
for a rest for our souls. We have peace with God in Him. We have access, by whom we also
have access, by faith into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice
in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, we glory in tribulations
also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience
experience, and experience hope. We'll talk more about tribulations
in our later message, but the very word means to be crushed. as a grape is crushed in a press. If you've lived like me, you
have felt that feeling on a daily basis, I would think. And the
moments where we don't are often fleeting and they can be taken
away with us. So the child of God, the prisoner
of hope, the prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ, he's looking,
according to Titus 2.13, he's looking for the blessed hope.
He has his begotten us again by the word of God into a living
hope by his abundant mercy. 1 Peter 3. This hope, the prisoners
of hope, those that have been set free from that prison where
there is no water being sent out, they're prisoners of hope,
but they are joyful. Blessed is he that hath the God
of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. The hope of the righteous shall
be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked shall perish. Blessed is the man, Jeremiah
17, who trusts us in the Lord, The Lord is. All of my hope,
all of my hope, all of the hope of Israel, all of the hope that
I have is the Lord Jesus Christ. Who he is and what he's done. On that great day of Pentecost,
It says, and he's quoting the psalm, therefore did my heart
rejoice, my tongue was glad, moreover my flesh shall rest
in hope. The flesh of God's people rests
in hope, the Lord Jesus Christ rested in hope. I'm a prisoner of Christ, he
says. I'm a willing prisoner. He says, I now stand and I'm
judged for the hope of the promise God has made unto us. He says in Acts 23, he cried
out, he said, men and brethren, I'm a Pharisee, the son of a
Pharisee of the hope and resurrection of the dead, I am called into
question. He says, I have hope toward God. He has hope towards God. Salvation. We are saved. Romans 8.24 says we are saved
by hope. We are saved by hope. Romans
12.12 says we rejoice in hope. Has God made you a prisoner? A prisoner of his son? If you're
a prisoner of his son, you'll be captive to his word. Your
hope will be based on what he's promised and nothing else. Your
hope will be based on the character of him, the one who makes the
promises. your hope will cause there to
be a rejoicing. All of the scriptures according
to Romans 15.4 were written aforetime for our learning that through
patience and the comfort of the scriptures Now the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope through
the power of the Holy Ghost. Lord, make us captive. Take us
prisoners. Take us and make us the prisoners
of hope. Turn us to the refuge. May we find ourselves having
refuge in none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. May we find
ourselves in Him who is the city of refuge. The Lord Jesus Christ
which is our hope. It's the hope of eternal life
which God that cannot lie promised before the world began. Is your
hope a really old Looking for the Blessed Hope,
Titus 2.13, and the glorious appearing of our great God and
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. We have hope. We have a ground
of hope. We have a substance of hope.
We have a rejoicing in hope. We have an expectation in hope. And it's all in the perfect and
finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a thing to be captive
to. What a God to be made captive
of. May the Lord cause us to be people
who rejoice in hope for his glory and our good and comfort. Amen. Let's have a break. Thank
you.