I wanted us to begin with these
two verses in 2 Thessalonians 2, because there's a phrase in verse
16 that'll be a thread that runs
through all of the scripture we'll look at today. a condensing of the very gospel
that's our hope. It's a partial definition, if
not a full one, of who it is in whom we hope. Our Lord Jesus Christ himself,
and God, even our Father, which hath loved us and hath given
us everlasting consolation, Good hope through grace Good hope your grace turn with
me to Exodus chapter 14, please Exodus 14 and verse 8 Exodus 14, eight, this will be
a story you'll be somewhat familiar with, but this passage will call
much of it to remembrance, I believe, and by the Lord's grace, may
it speak to our hearts. Verse eight, and the Lord hardened
the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the
children of Israel, and the children of Israel went out with an high
hand, but the Egyptians pursued after them, all the horses and
chariots of Pharaoh and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them
in camping by the sea beside Pihahiroth before Baal-ziphon. And when Pharaoh drew nigh, the
children of Israel lifted up their eyes and behold, the Egyptians
marched after them and they were sore afraid. And the children
of Israel cried out unto the Lord, And they said unto Moses,
because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us
away to die in the wilderness? Wherefore hast thou dealt thus
with us, to carry us forth out of Egypt? Is not this the word
that we did tell thee in Egypt, saying, let us alone, that we
may serve the Egyptians? For it had been better for us
to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness.
And Moses said unto the people, fear ye not. Stand still and
see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show you today.
For the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you shall see them
again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you
and you shall hold your peace. People place their hope in many
things. And when trials come, when difficulties
come, people tend to cling to those things in which they hope. But consider these Israelites
in this particular moment in time, the entire army of Egypt
on one side and the Red Sea on the other. And they speak to Moses as if
they're already dead. Look at what you've done. Look
what has happened. They're fine. There's nothing
wrong with them. They went out with a high hand, the scripture
says. The Lord gave them much riches with which to carry on
their journey. They had plenty of food and everything.
They were in pretty good shape, but they were afraid. And they spoke as if they were
already dead. Their hope was one that they couldn't even see. They hadn't even considered it.
Have we had moments like that? When the one hope that we have
is one that we don't even consider? They might've hoped in other
things before they came to this moment. They might have hoped,
well, the Egyptians will start treating us better. Just leave
us alone, we'll stay here. And it's gonna get better. They'll
see how good, how hardworking we are and everything will be
fine. Would that have been a good hope? They didn't have a good hope
until they didn't have any other hope. And it was a hope that
they didn't even think about. A hope that they had forgotten.
But their hope was a good hope. They could have hoped in the
mercy of Pharaoh even at that time. They could have gone and
waved white flags. That would have been a false
hope. Maybe they could have had a glimmer
of hope that maybe while the Egyptians were slaughtering all
their countrymen that they and their babies might be able to
escape. But there was nowhere to go. The only good hope they had was
through grace. Grace. The grace of God. And yet they berated God's man, the one who
pictures Christ here. All of their other hopes were
false, and the one hope they had, a good hope, A hope that
made the inevitable an afterthought. A hope that made the impossible
certain. That hope was lost on them in
that moment. A hope that turned all fear into
rejoicing, and yet they didn't see it. That replaced all of their dread
and their misery in that time with thanksgiving and praise. Could this be that moment for
somebody? Have we ever been in that moment? The grace of God is a powerful
hope. It's the only good hope that
there is. If we lean on the arm of the
flesh, trust in the mercy of this world, which doesn't exist,
if we trust in our own ability, Those are false hopes. The Lord
Jesus Christ, pictured by Moses in this text by the rod of the
right hand of his power, is able to make it all go away. You're
not, I'm not, but he is. He did not save you from bondage.
and shame to leave you to yourself on the banks of the sea. If you're one of his chosen and
eternally beloved sheep, you will yet sing on the other side
of the sea. And here's the song you'll sing.
Like they did, I will sing unto the Lord for he hath triumphed
gloriously. The Lord is my strength and my
song, and he has become my salvation. He is my God. Turn with me to 1 Samuel chapter
30. Verse one. 1 Samuel 30, verse one. It came
to pass when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third
day that the Amalekites had invaded the south and Ziklag and smitten
Ziklag and burned it with fire. and had taken the women captives
that were therein, and they slew not any, either great or small,
but carried them away and went on their way. So David and his
men came to the city, and behold, it was burned with fire, and
their wives and their sons and their daughters were taken captives.
Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their
voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. And David's two wives were taken
captives, Ahinoan, the Jezreelites, and Abigail, the wife of Nabal,
the Carmelite. And David was greatly distressed
for the people spake of stoning him because the soul of all the
people was grieved, every man for his sons and his daughters. But David encouraged himself
in the Lord his God. And David said to Abiathar the
priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod.
And Abiathar brought hither the ephod to David, and David inquired
at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? Shall I overtake
them? And he answered him, Pursue,
for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover
all. So David went, he and the 600
men that were with him, came to the brook Besor, where those
that were left behind stayed. But David pursued, he and 400
men for 200 abode behind, which were so faint, they could not
go over the brook Besor. So look at verse 16 now. And
when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread abroad
upon all the earth, eating and drinking and dancing because
of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of
the Philistines and out of the land of Judah. And David smote
them from the twilight, even unto the evening of the next
day, and there escaped not a man of them, say 400 young men, which
rode upon camels and fled. And David recovered all that
the Amalekites had carried away, and David rescued his two wives.
And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great,
neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil nor anything that they
had taken to them, David. Recovered all again. I call to
your attention that particular moment in time when there was
Not even any longer strength to weep That's when miracles
happen that's when God does what he does That's the place where
the Lord brings us to and shall we forget him then Shall we utterly
despair if we? If we do, if we forget him, he
won't forget us. The grace of God is free. We have a good hope through grace
because his grace is free. It's powerful and it's free. The Lord Jesus Christ as pictured
by David in this passage is our unfailing champion. even when we don't see him that
way. They did not see him that way. They saw him as the victim, as
the problem, as the culprit. They blamed David. And to find only misery and hopelessness
in any situation for God's sheep is to doubt his goodness and
his sure promises to us. We are that weak. We are that
foolish. But in this moment, whether we
remember him or forget him, whether we praise him or blame him, his
deliverance of us is sure. It is complete. And it's the
living definition of free grace. even unsought for grace, unconsidered
grace, grace that we too often fail
to consider or to be thankful for, but which is in spite of that,
our good hope. There are a lot of places in
God's word we could go Can we find this moment again
where the good hope of grace is maybe despaired of and yet
no less good? We could go to the camp of Israel
again when no one had the courage or the faith, the strength to
go against Goliath And again, there we would see Christ pictured
by David as our only hope. But what other hope did they
need? It was a hope that they scoffed at. It was a hope that
they didn't consider hope. They were so afraid and depressed
and in anguish that they couldn't see it. This isn't gonna work,
this isn't, he's not gonna be a help. But what we see there in that
field, on that battlefield, that when we have no strength, it's
his strength that is our hope. It's that which we neglect and
take for granted and despise even, that is the only hope we
have and the only one we need. That when we have no faith, He is our faith and our faithfulness
to God. Would Martha understand us this
morning? Would she have something to say? Having said to the master,
if you'd only been here, my brother would not have died. And having been so blinded by
the events that had taken place and finding hope only in another
event, when the master taught her, Martha,
I am, I am, I am. Did she learn that and more importantly,
Have we? Will we? Do we know that what we need is
not for our circumstances to change? That's not what we need. What we need is not for our trial
to end. What we need is a person. One thing is needful. the Son of God, His presence,
His power, His willingness. If the Lord will, He can when
you can't. And that's pretty much all the
time. That reminds us of when there
was a great crowd of people far from town and there was no food. And the disciples, of course,
panicked, and they said, we've got to send these people away.
We have, and he asked them, what do you have? And they said, well,
we've got these five loaves and a couple of fish, and that was
enough for maybe two people, maybe three. But you know, we're, our attention
is drawn to that miracle. the Lord's creative power. And rightly so, because we see
something about who he is, as the disciples did when they said,
what manner of man is this? But we're drawn to that miracle
as believers, we're drawn to the spectacular, we tend to wait
for that, but you know what, Lord, do something, do something.
When as believers, we're not waiting on a miracle to happen,
we're living one. Where did those loaves and fish
that they had come from? Why did someone decide to bring
that that day when nobody else did? The miracle's already happened. We don't need Him to do anything
else. He's already done everything. Don't look for a miracle. Realize
that the miracle is Christ, that you're in the hand of the miracle. You see, one of the lessons that
we have to learn about this is we're not just waiting for something
to happen. We always look, well, it's gonna
get better. It's already better. It's better now because you're
His, because you belong to Him, because He's on the throne, because
He runs everything and everybody. It's already better. If we look for something else
to happen, we're in greats for what he's already done. We're in the hand of God's son
and we can never be anywhere else. Our good hope through grace
is just him. The disciples scoffed when the
Lord said, bring those fish and those loaves to me and tell the
people to sit down. They said, we better get going.
It's gonna take a while to get to town. Send them away. And
the Lord said, they don't need to go anywhere. That's what I want God to teach
us this morning. We don't need to go from this
place to that place, from this time to that time. There's nowhere
we need to go. We're already there. Now's the time to praise him.
Not when he does something that we want him to do. He's already
done everything for us. Already. You don't need to go
anywhere. You just need Him. Right there, in that moment,
when they're scoffing, when they're despaired of any other possible
hope, that's when the only good hope
that sinners have is realized. That's when he shows it to us. Should we check in this morning
on the ruler of the synagogue in Luke 8? Would we see there
this moment of singular hope? When all other hope is lost,
when the servant comes to the ruler and says, why trouble you
the master any further? Your daughter's dead, she's gone. Might we hear even now this morning,
you think we could hear it? Would he speak to our hearts
and say what he did to that man? Don't be scared. Only believe. Only believe. You see what this whole book
is about. When the God of heaven and earth
made a covenant with his son, that included me, that included
you. When he sent his only begotten son,
and it pleased God to crush him, to lay on the Lord Jesus Christ
the iniquity of us all, and to lay down his life for his friends. When he revealed unto us his
great glory, In the face of his son, his crucified and risen son, God gave us a good hope. And you're not going to have
that good hope until you don't have any other ones. The woman with the issue of blood,
She had hope before, didn't she? The next doctor, I hear this
fellows better than all the rest. The next doctor is gonna heal
me. I'm gonna get better. There's a new medicine that they've
come out with. She had all kinds of hope until
she didn't. But none of it was good hope. She hadn't met her good hope
yet. And she never did until she had no other. Her hope was the grace of God
in his son, Jesus Christ. The only good hope that there
is. Every other hope is false. It doesn't matter if you're going
through the great trial and suffering that comes when you see yourself
as you are before God, or some trial He sends to His children
after they know Him, because whom the Lord loves, He chastens
and corrects and teaches and strengthens and causes them to
turn to Him. God gave us a good hope through
grace, and notice it's Him all the way,
everything we talked about in eternity, all the way down to
the time that we looked into His very face. It's Christ, chosen
in Christ. Who did God send when the law
couldn't do anything for us and that it was weak through our
flesh? God sent His Son. Who was it that spoke the word
of grace to our hearts and said, peace, be still? Who is it that
still does that? God gave us a good hope through
grace that's in Christ, and it's a hope that's sure and unshakable,
but can't we see it? Do we take it for granted? Do
we scoff at that with the way that we live? See, I know how we think. I know
how you think, because we're the same. We might be encouraged
by the word of God. We'll come in and we'll hear
the gospel. We'll be comforted, and rightly so, by the gospel
and hearing about the Savior. And then we'll think, well, it's
back to reality. We've got to leave here, and
then our dark thoughts are going to come back, and then our shame
and the aching misery over what has happened is all going to
come back. It's back to reality. This is
real. This is real. Our thoughts and
our feelings are a dream. This is what's real. We're back
to reality right now. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? That's our good hope. But he gave himself for us and
promised, I will never leave you. I will not leave you comfortless. He said, I will come to you. And nothing shall separate us
from his love. Nothing. Shall death or life,
such it is as it is in this world, shall anything separate us from
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? In the very context of the language
where he tells us in Romans 8 that no one and nothing can separate
us from his love, he also tells us that he works all things for
our good. And whatever it is that happens,
it can't keep us from, it can't keep him from loving us. And
it can't, can it get in the way of you loving him? Surely not. Because He died for us, we can
never be charged with sin. And because He loves us with
an everlasting love, nothing bad can happen to us. No circumstance
can convince us otherwise, if we only believe. If we look only to Him, if we
trust only Him, then we will yet sing his praises
together here. We will yet bless his name. We
will yet honor him. We'll say whatever he gives or
takes, blessed be his name. In prisons or in palaces, in
the storm or after it, or before the next one. Anybody can sing the praises
of the Lord on the far side of the Red Sea. Would he maybe give
us a song on this side? Doesn't he sometimes do that? Our thoughts and our fears Torturous. I would not minimize that, because
with you I've experienced them. But I'm here to tell you this
morning, they are unfounded. Fear has no rightful place in
the heart of a child of God. The good hope that we have through
our Savior's grace is what's real. And may He conform our thoughts
to that, to that hope. May He conform our feelings to
that hope. May He bless us to live in the
conscious reality of the good hope that we have in Him. Amen, let's pray.