Last Friday, I was in my office
over at the church building making some preparations for the worship
during the weekend when I was called and asked to meet with
the Vincerkson family. They'd asked me to preside over
the funeral here today. And when I met with them, one
of the things we talked about was the concept of hope. Hope. Normally, in our day and
age, when we use the word hope, we're simply thinking something
we wish for. Someone might say, well, I hope
someday to be a millionaire. But there's really, they have
no idea whether they will be or not. They just kind of hope
someday they will be. But the Bible says, or the way
the Bible uses it, the way the English of the King James uses
the word hope, is not simply some out there wish or desire
about how we think things will work out. Rather, a hope is a
confident expectation, not Simply something we wish will happen
But something that we believe will happen and we believe it
will happen for reasons Now that's what a hope is when you read
hope in the Bible. That's almost always what it's
talking about The Bible says in Romans chapter 8 verse 24
That we are saved by hope and that this hope involves things
we do not see. We hope for. The believer in
Christ Jesus is hoping for things he does not see. He's hoping
for things that right now he cannot see. And realize that
when the Bible uses the word see like that, it's not just
talking about we can't see with the eyes. We can't sense them
in any way at all. They are things that do not pertain
to this life. We hope for things which are
not actually experienced in this life. And we don't look for them
in this life. We have the scriptures speak
of the hope of righteousness. Well, I'm glad that by the grace
of God, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ has been
charged to my account. But I can tell you this, if you
were to know what I do and know what I think, and know what I
desire, you would never say that I am a righteous man. The righteousness
of God's elect is a righteousness which they do not yet experience.
It's the righteousness for which they hope. And it's not a vain
hope. It's not a mere wish. It's something
they expect that shall be theirs. And they expect it for reasons. It says, goes on to say in Romans
8, 25, that since it involves things that we do not see, that
we do not presently experience, that we wait patiently for them. Now, it does not mean that we
wait patiently for them to see whether or not we shall have
them. You see, the Bible never puts doubt in the believer's
mind. It never says to us, believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ and hope against hope that someday
maybe you'll be saved. It says, believe upon the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You see, hope is not a
doubtful thing. Hope is a confidence in things
to come. And we do not wait to see whether
they shall be. We simply patiently wait to experience
the fullness of it. So we spoke about hope. Peter
says that we have been born again, we've been begotten again unto
a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Paul says we have a good hope through grace. But no matter how desirable our
hope may be, it is nothing more than wishful thinking if our
hope is not founded on something firm. If you build a house, it
may be a beautiful house. It may show great architectural
talent. It may show nice decorating skills
with colors that go together well. It may be a beautiful thing. And once you have built it, others
may look at it and say, that's beautiful. I wish I lived there.
But if that house does not set on a firm foundation, what shall
happen? It shall collapse. It shall not
look good for very long. Our Lord used that illustration,
saying there was a foolish man that built his house upon sand.
And when the rain came, when the floods came, and the wind
blew, what happened? It fell down, as you would expect
a house built upon the sand to fall down. But he says, the wise
man dug down deep, and he found some bedrock. And he built his
house on that rock. And though the house of itself
was no better than the foolish man's house, yet it endured. Why? Well, not because of the
house itself, but because the foundation upon which it was
built. And our hopes will fall flat
if they are based upon or founded upon something that changes,
something that is not strong enough to hold the house. The
foundation of the believer's hope, the foundation of the believer's
hope is a firm foundation, a foundation declared in the scriptures And
this foundation is nothing more and nothing less than the Lord
Jesus Christ himself. Paul said there is no foundation
that can be laid other than the foundation which has already
been laid, Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus. A house built upon
that foundation will stand. Now Paul, who spoke to us of
a good hope in grace, I want to look at something he said
about the proper foundation for a hope, a good hope, a living
hope, a saving hope. He says in Philippians chapter
3, and I'll begin reading at verse 8, read a couple of verses.
Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered
the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that is
garbage, that I may win Christ and be found in him, not having
my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that righteousness
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. Now Paul had a hope of eternal
life. It was a confident hope. He had
no doubt about it in his mind whether he would possess eternal
life. But the firmness of his belief
was that that hope was founded on Christ and Christ alone. Now, I want to look at three
things from what Paul says here. And from these, I want and desire
that God would open our hearts to receive this truth, and that
all of us could go away from here with a good hope through
grace. A good hope for the sake of the
one who is now gone, but even more importantly, a good hope
for ourselves. Now there is a day coming, when
everyone will be sought and everyone will be found. Paul told the
philosophers in Athens that God has appointed a day in which
he will judge the world in righteousness by Jesus Christ. Now that day
is coming. We have no clue when it will
come. Our Lord says it will come like
a thief in the night, and nobody knows when a thief in the night's
coming. If you knew, You'd be ready and the thief would not
be able to steal your goods. Now, the Lord is not a thief,
but he will come like one unannounced. The only announcement we get
is the certainty that he shall come. He's given us no clue as
to when that will be. It could be today. It could be
a million years from now. It could be next week. We don't
know. He will come, though. It's on his calendar, even though
he has not marked it on our calendars for us. He will come, it is as
certain as anything is. His coming in judgment, it is
as certain as His coming in salvation was a couple of thousand years
ago. God had predicted and prophesied the coming of the Lord Jesus
long ago. He didn't tell when, but at God's appointed time,
He came, didn't He? In the fullness of time, says the Apostle Paul
in Galatians, God sent His Son into the world. He came at the
appointed time. And the Lord Jesus Christ will
come again at God's appointed time. And when He comes, there
will be no place for anyone to hide that is so secure that they
won't be found. Everyone will be sought. Everyone
will be found. Everyone will see the face of
God in Jesus Christ. And everyone will give an account
unto him." That's a sobering thing to think
about. In fact, it's such a solemn thing to think about, most of
us try not to think about it. We don't want to think about
that day, because this is a day in which there is no place to
hide such that you will not be found. Everyone will be found,
but let's use this scripture more to our benefit than to simply
say, everyone will be found. On that day, I will be found. On that day, you will be found. There will be no place for you
to hide that the Lord Jesus Christ will not find you. And we must not let the power
of this truth be lost on us by setting this day so far in the
future that we can just kind of forget about it. Because you see, while the final
day may be a long way off, it is also written in the scriptures,
is appointed unto man once to die, and after this, the judgment. Tomorrow, I will be 62. And I am amazed at how quickly
I got here. I've been in Iowa now for almost
30 years. And it seemed like yesterday
I moved here. And if it was just yesterday I moved here, it was
just the day before yesterday I was born. And in another day, if I even
get that much more time, if the Lord gives me 20 or 30 more years,
or 20 or 30 more minutes, I know this, it'll go by more quickly
than I thought it would. I see some children here. By
the time you're grown and fully established as adults, in all
likelihood, I'll be gone. And I will go to face him from
whom no one can hide with success." Now, Paul did not found his hope
for that day on the belief that he would escape judgment. Rather,
his hope was that on that day he would survive judgment. And
he had a good reason for believing that, a good reason for that
hope. Now, the hope of a believer is
not that in that day he will not be found, but that when judgment
finds him, he will be found in Christ. You see, when it comes
to the eternal judgment of God, the issue is not whether you'll
be found, the issue is where will you be found? And that's
the difference in eternity. That is the difference between
the eternity of blessedness that we would all like to experience
and the eternity of torment, which is laid up for all those
who are found in their sins. Our Lord Jesus said to the religious
leaders of his day, he says, if you do not believe that I
am, you will die in your sins. And better to die a thousand
deaths than to die one death in your sins. Better never to
be than to be found in your sins by a holy God. But Paul said,
here's my hope, here's my desire, and this is what I have confidence
of, that I will be found in Christ. This is pure simplicity. Paul's
hope for a blessed future did not arise from some complex system
of theology. It rested entirely upon a person,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, it's not as though Paul
did not have good theology. It's not as though he probably
could have baffled any one of us here in describing theology
as he understood it. But his hope was not based upon
an intricate system of theology. His hope was based on a person
Jesus Christ, God's son. With Paul, everything was Christ. Peter said, we must always be
ready to give an answer for the hope that is within us. And yes,
hope is within us, but the foundation of our hope is completely outside
of us. We may say, I have hope in my
heart. Good, I hope you do. I hope you do. I hope you have
a good hope. But if you have a good hope,
this I know, that hope is founded on something completely outside
of yourself that has nothing to do with you. For everything
about us is faulty. Everything about us is the sinking
sands of a foundation upon which the house will fall in when the
day of judgment comes. Some look inside themselves for
a reason for hope. They say, well, I would like
to go to heaven when I die. I would like to escape judgment.
And I think maybe that'll happen because, well, I've got a real
feeling of repentance within me. The Scripture never says,
look for repentance. Found your hope upon repentance.
We find our hope upon Christ. In repentance, we found our hope
on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not to be founded upon our
feelings. It's not to be founded upon our
attempts at being good. It's a good thing to try to be
good. But there's a big difference between trying to be good and
actually doing it. And there's nobody here, not me, not you,
not those that have gone before, nor those who shall be born after,
who has ever done anything that God could look upon and say,
that's good. I approve of that. I'm standing here as a preacher
of the gospel. And I desperately want to preach
the gospel to you in purity and truth. I desperately want me
to believe it, you to believe it, God to be honored. I want
all those things. But you know something? If God were to say
to me, you just pick one thing out of your life, the best thing
you ever did, and I will judge you for eternity based on that.
I could not even bring this sermon before God. and say, based on
that day I preached the gospel to some people, decide for me
where I shall spend eternity. If God were to say to me, choose
something from your life, anything, and I will judge you based on
that one small thing, I would say, oh God, no, no, nothing
in my hand I bring. to Christ's cross I claim. Religion will put us on a path
of looking at ourselves to find some reason for hope. But all the scriptures and every
faithful preacher ever since the scriptures have been written
have told us to look outside of ourselves and look away from
ourselves and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. God set him forth
to be a propitiation, that is a sacrifice of atonement through
faith in his blood. And brethren, if God set him
forth, that means set him out there in public. If God set him
forth, we best be looking there. If God said look to him, then
he gives us a warrant to look to him. And he lays upon us the
responsibility to look to him. Shall God say, look to my son?
And I say, well, I think I'll look somewhere else. That would
be a high-handed insult to God. Paul utterly rejected any form
of righteousness. In chapter 3 of Philippians,
he gave the pedigree in which he once hoped. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews, circumcised
the eighth day, such as the law told him to do. a zealous man. He went beyond his peers while
there was no more zealous religious, Jewish religious man in that
day than the Apostle Paul. And he, after giving his itemized
pedigree, he summarizes all of this and listen to what he says.
As touching that righteousness which is in the law, I was blameless. But you know what else he said
about himself in that condition? He said, I am the chief of sinners. You say, how can that be? Because
it doesn't matter what you've done if you're outside of Christ,
you are the chief of sinners. It doesn't matter how good you've
been, even if you could come up with a pedigree like Paul
did. And I wouldn't even boast of that. But Paul said all that
he had, which he thought was going to help him, which he thought
was going to cast him in a good light in the sight of God. He
said, I came to the point, I didn't even just count it as something
I got to sacrifice. He said, I saw for what it was,
so much garbage. And I threw it away and was glad
to be done with it. For what? For the excellency
of knowing Christ. Of gaining Christ. And of being
found in Christ. Not having a righteousness of
his own. You say, well, Paul's saying that we shouldn't try
to be good. That's not what he's talking about at all. He's saying, I
don't want to be found in that day trying to hide in my righteousness. Because if you hide in your righteousness,
you will be found for the chief of sinners that you are. He said,
I want to be found in Christ. The Bible gives us a couple of
good illustrations of what it is to be found in Christ. In
the days of Noah, when man's wickedness increased upon the
face of the earth, and God pronounced judgment on everybody, he told
Noah, build an ark. And when I tell you to, you get
in it. And he did. And the flood came. God's judgment,
typified in those floodwaters, fell upon the earth, such as
it has never experienced before or since. And it is the belief of many
that it was not like 40 days and 40 nights of rain, and finally
everybody died. Most who study that say by the
end of the first day pretty much everybody was gone. It was that
violent a flood. Now why did Noah survive the
flood? Did he survive the flood because
he built an ark? Did he survive the flood because
he got together two of every kind of animals? He survived
the flood because when the flood came he was in the ark. How many there are, what a dreadful
way to perish. But how many there may have been
in Noah's day who knew about the ark, maybe even helped build
it. Maybe were hired by Noah to build it. Maybe they knew
all the plans for the ark. But they weren't in the ark when
the flood came. And how many religious people
are full of doctrine and they understand the doctrine of the
gospel. And yet they never from their
heart call upon the name of the Lord and lay hold of His salvation. And the day will come and they
won't be in Christ. And then there's one more, the
Passover. On that day when God was going
to demonstrate His great justice against sin, and you'll notice
the Lord says, I'm going to pass through Egypt. He didn't say,
I'm going to pass through the Egyptians. He said, I'm going
to pass through Egypt. And the Jews were in Egypt. So
that meant the Jews were in trouble from God. You see, the Jews were
every bit as sinful as the Egyptians were. Just like God's judgment
fell on everyone in Egypt, so God's judgment is upon all people
in the world. But he told the Jews something
he didn't tell the Egyptians. And he told them about taking
a lamb and killing that lamb and taking some of the blood
of that lamb and putting it there on the doorpost and up at the
lintel there. He said and then you go inside and you feed upon
that land and you stay inside that house Because tonight I'm
coming through Egypt and as I come through I'm gonna be looking
at the doors And when I see the blood I'll pass over you I Want
you to notice a few things God didn't say he was looking for
he didn't say when I see your faith I will pass over you He
didn't say, when I see your good deeds, I will pass over you.
He didn't say, when I see your confidence, I will pass over
you. He said, when I see the blood. In all those houses, each one
of those houses, those Jewish houses in Egypt, each one of
them with the blood upon them was a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ himself. For it was a picture of his blood,
even showing out the pattern of one who bleeds upon a cross. And everyone in that house was
safe. And why were they safe? What
was the blood a token of? It was a token of judgment fulfilled.
You see, judgment passed upon the Jews in that day, but it
was fulfilled in that sacrificial land. And judgment shall pass
upon all people in the days to come. But judgment for the people
of God has already been accomplished in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
they are in Him. And on that day, God will come
and He will see them. Judgment's already come here.
And as Augustus Toplady wrote, the one... He wrote that... Him,
we're all familiar with Rock of Ages. But he wrote another
one. He says, Judgment payment will not twice demand. First
at my bleeding surety's hand, and then again at mine. Oh, a
just God will not punish the same sin twice. If my sin has
been punished in Christ, it will not be punished in me. If the blood of Christ was shed
for me, my blood will never be shed for my sins. Why is being found in Christ
such a good hope? And we'll finish with a couple
of remarks here. Talking about a good hope, a good hope founded
upon Christ. Why is a hope in Christ a good
hope? Well, the first reason is found
in Ephesians chapter 1. Paul says there, blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. Everything that God has for sinners
is in Christ. And if you're in Christ, you've
got it all. And if you're outside of Christ,
you don't have any of it. It's as though God says, my entire
treasury is in this one treasure box. And if you have that box, you
have the whole thing. And among the blessings he mentions
is the blessing of being chosen in Him before the foundation
of the world. The blessing of being predestinated in Him. The
blessing of redemption through His blood and forgiveness according
to the riches of God's grace in Christ. Of being given an
understanding of the gospel. Christ all these things are blessings
in Christ and he that is in Christ has them all Another reason it's
a good hope when one is in Christ John says in Christ in him is
no sin I Know that at that point John was pointing out that the
Lord Jesus Christ In his person had no sin. So that's what the
gospel is teaching us. I I mean, that's one of the main
points of the Gospel. That as He is, this is the way
John put it, as He is, so are we in this world. If we're in
Christ and there is no sin in Him, then so far as God the Judge
of all is concerned, there is no sin in us. You say, but I
know me. I know there's sin in me. Wait
a minute. We're talking about how God the
Judge sees you, not how you see you or how your neighbor sees
you. If you're in Christ, in Him is no sin. If you're in Christ,
in you is no sin in the sight of God. And then lastly, a good hope
in Christ is good, the Apostle says, because in Christ there
is neither Jew nor Gentile, bond or free, male or female, educated
or ignorant. There is not a barbarian. Doesn't
matter whether you're civilized or barbarian, none of that is
of any significance. For Christ is all. The hardest thing to believe
in all the world is that a sinner like me is entirely accepted
as a son of God because of what someone else did and has nothing
to do with me. In fact, that's so hard to believe.
No one can believe it unless God gives him grace to. Every
one of us has a natural tendency to trust in ourselves, to try
to interject something of what we do or what we feel or whatever. We come up with something that
makes the difference between us and the lost. But there's
a great picture of what is the difference between the lost and
was saved right there on Calvary. For our Lord was crucified between
two thieves, one who on that day went to hell and another
who on that day went to paradise. And that which separated one
from the other was Christ. He was the only difference. I
pray that the Lord God would give you comfort in this, that
our hope, the hope of any man or woman, the hope of Every man
or woman is Christ. Have you a good hope through
grace? Or is your hope still based upon
something you're trying to do? Oh, God, save us from ourselves
and put us in Christ.