The Hope Filling Father

Introduction

Our society is running out of hope because it has abandoned the story of Jesus. The CEO of World Vision Tim Costello speaks like a worried man when he says, ‘we’ve stripped our kids of hope. Our grandfathers hoped that if they ran the risk with their wives of coming out to this country and surviving the ship journey and then going out into the outback and building a life, they might develop a better future for their children, their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren. ‘Our fathers, hoped that if they worked hard they’d have a comfortable retirement and be able to provide a better outlook for their children. Our children hope for a good time tonight.’ Since Costello wrote that a few years ago, we would probably say that today our young people hope for some excitement from the next text message[1].Very few people share a solid hope for Australia’s moral and spiritual future.

This hopelessness drives us deeper into God’s revelation in Christ to recover hope for a far better future for all whom we love. Jesus own life was inspired and empowered by hope, the great hope of being raised from the dead for the glory of his Father (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34cf. Heb 12:1-2). In the Bible hope is neither optimism nor wishful thinking but a certain assurance that what God did for Jesus he will do for us. Peter speaks with great confidence when he teaches, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3 cf. 2 Thess 2:16). Hope is an expression of our relationship with God as a loving Father brings dead things back to life.

Since the gospel of Christ is the source of hope the enemies of hope are enemies of the gospel (Phil 3:18). Satan’s insidious agencies in his war against hope have penetrated deep inside the institutions of the Church.

The Enemies of Hope

God promised Adam and Eve they would live forever, have many offspring and rule the world (Gen 1:26-28) as long as they never ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When the devil entered Eden and whispered to Eve, ““You won’t die!…your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God”” (Gen 3:4-5) he sounded like a caring father who had the future best interests of a daughter at heart, but when Adam and Eve ate from the tree the truth was exposed (cf. James 3:15-16). Naked, ashamed and under the sentence of death they hid from God, having become, as my mum and dad would say, “no hopers”. Satan is an anti-Father whose greatest delight is to steal, kill and destroy the hopes of the children of God. Jesus told the Pharisees, “you are children of your father the devil….he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44-45). Paul’s description of those who do not follow Jesus is truly alarming, “following the devil….by nature children deserving God’s wrath….without God and without hope in this world” (Eph 2:1ff). Australians are spiritually blind to the state of their own lives. A survey commissioned by the Australian Psychological Association this year reveals that 73% of the population is suffering from significant stress, and almost one in 5 reports that anxiety as having a strong/very strong impact on the quality of living[2]. Every addiction, drugs, sex, food, is an attempt to cover up a sense of hopelessness.  Contrast this with the gospel message, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Rom 15:13).

A famous poem contains the line, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast” (Alexander Pope); people always want to look on the bright side of life. Ordinary human hope is however silent in the face of the cruelty of death. I will always remember the morbid atmosphere at the funeral I took for a teenager brutally murdered by a stranger. There was a total absence of ordinary human hope. [] The only one who can overcome the hopelessness of life in a fallen and dying world is Jesus.

Christ Our Hope

I was very upset some years ago to come across a slogan promoted by one of the largest churches in America, “The Local Church is the Hope of the World”. To treat the church as the hope of the world is to commit idolatry, a sin which has in many ways led to the spiritual mess of Western Christianity today. In contrast to such church-centred thinking Paul proclaims “Christ Jesus our hope,” (1 Tim 1:1).

Around the time of the birth of Jesus many pious Israelites were waiting and praying for the birth of a deliverer who would rescue the people from their sufferings and bring hope to the nations (Isa 11:10; Luke 2:25; 38; 24:21). When Jesus appeared proclaiming the kingdom of God, healing the sick and setting free all who were oppressed by the devil (Acts 10:38) the people grew in expectation that the kingdom of heaven was coming with irresistible power (Luke 19:11). The presence of Jesus generated intense expectations so that enormous hope-filled crowds proclaimed him king as he entered Jerusalem (John 12:12-19). Then came the darkness, anguish and pain of the cross. Even for his closest friends Jesus became a source of despair!

At the climax of this atmosphere of hopelessness is the terrible cry, ““My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”” (Mark 15:34). This cry of dereliction is to all human intents and appearances the extinction of hope for it appears that Jesus’ Father has abandoned him. Many commentators on this passage try to explain away its plain meaning. They say that Jesus was mistaken about his own feelings, or that he was quoting the start of Psalm 22 which is overall a psalm of victory, and so on. The New Testament writers however possess total clarity concerning the cross. John says that because God “loved us” he “sent his Son to be the propitiation/atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10). If the death of Jesus is the climax of God’s loving purposes why did Jesus feel so unloved, so absolutely hopeless, as he hung on the cross. The answer must be found deep within the true character of God’s Fatherhood, the heavenly Father is not a passive, indifferent or distant Father, he is a fighting Father, a “man of war” (Ex 15:3) who in the words of Revelation is the one whose “wrath… will destroy the destroyers of the earth” (Rev 11:18 cf. Col 1:21; Ex ).  God loves us by hating our sin, for sin is the root of all the destructive hopelessness of this world, and he fights against and destroys our sin by warring against it as it is taken into Jesus on the cross (2 Cor 5:21). Radical feminists say this understanding of the cross makes God guilty of child abuse, but for the New Testament writers Jesus experience of separation from the Father is the measure of God’s unconditional love (1 John 4:10). Only a God who is totally serious about the abolition of our hopelessness can be trusted.

To find such a God Jesus always leads us to his Father. Christ did not say “I am the way” but “I am…the way…no one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6). Jesus endured crucifixion and death by faith because he trusted the character of his Father to raise him from the dead (Heb 12:1-2) He understood that in the wise plan of God to lift the hopeless only someone who has lost their Father can receive and release the Spirit of adoption (Rom 1:4), only a man whose spirit has been crushed can be revived and revive others (Hos 6:2) and only a deceased person can rise from the dead.

I have ministered to some truly tragic hope-destroying cases over the years, the man born alive who was meant to be a late term abortion, the twin who was left in his bassinet with his brother on the steps of a hospital. The only person who can console such despair is the one who has died and rose again. The only answer to such levels of desolation is resurrection. “Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father” (Rom 6:4).

What reveals God to be a Father, what gives him his greatest fatherly joy, is to bring back to life dead things and to renew hope for even greater things. The author of Hebrews explains that “Jesus…for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (12:2 cf. Luke 15:32). Peter defiantly applies the power of the resurrection message to the persecuted Christian minority in his day, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3).

A Living Hope

Nothing in this world can give you a “living hope”. There is an inscription on an English gravestone which speaks of dashed hopes of a mother and father for a dearest child: “The unfortunate Parents ventured their all on the frail (vessel) Bark. And the wreck was total.” All the best things of this world, marriage, family, health, nationhood, will perish. As I walk through the city I am reminded at times that all of these impressive building will crumble to dust (cf. Mark 13:1-2). The only source of living hope is the indestructible resurrection life of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:23). After his death Jesus’ disciples were isolated, alone and afraid (John 20:19) but when they saw him raised from the dead they were overwhelmed with amazing joy (Luke 24:41). This was the irrepressible victorious joy of the Father’s kingdom shared with his sons (Rom 14:17; Matt 13:43). In the strength of this revelation the apostles knew that whatever would happen to them, and all but one would die tortured painful deaths, they had a Father in heaven whose goodness towards then would never fail. This world is full of groaning, but the confident and eager hope laid out in the gospel is that at the right time God will give us “new bodies” as a sign of our full rights as his adopted sons (Rom 8:18-25)[3].

An Infernal Conspiracy

These great and wonderful hopes are as fiercely opposed in the fair city of Perth today as they were opposed in the paradise of Eden and on that day when cruel men crucified the Son of God. Satan’s first step in undermining the Church’s confidence in herself as “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15) is to undermine our assurance of the resurrection. Paul prophetically states, “if there is no resurrection, “Let’s feast and drink, for tomorrow we die.”” (1 Cor 15:32).  The concern for personal pleasure and prosperity that permeates so much of the Church today is a clear sign that the proclamation of the bodily resurrection of Christ has been obscured.

The apostle warned that false teachers like “fierce wolves” would savage the flock of God from within the Church (Acts 20:29). How do you recognise these vicious wolves? A Christian friend, who used to carry guns, trade drugs and mix with bikies, and so has rich experience in these things, used to say, “What does a wolf in sheep’s clothing look like (Matt 7:15)?… A sheep.”  Men and women lacking a revelation of the Heavenly Father will inevitably tear and rip into the people of God committing every sort of imaginable abuse against the defenceless and innocent. The sexual abuse scandal in the institutional churches in Australia is a necessary consequence of its deep rejection of God as Father. God himself does not trust the spiritual parenting of much of the Church in this part of the world (cf. Jer 5:28). The Holy Scriptures warn us that “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 So it is no surprise if his servants…disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.” (2 Cor 11:14-15).

Small and Insignificant

God always works through the weak and insignificant; “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthywhen God called you. ²⁷ But God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. ²⁸ God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. ²⁹ As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor 1:26-29).

Satan is a master strategist who knows that every time you knock someone down it’s just that little bit harder to get up and hope again. His goal is to kill hope “but God” gives us resurrection hope (1 Cor 1:27; Ps 73:26). The ways of the Father in raising the dead are mysterious but wise; upon hearing that Lazarus was ill Jesus deliberately delayed his coming until he was well and truly dead , and Christ himself had to lie in the tomb for three days (John 11:1-5;cf. 2 Pet 3:4). Such divine delays are tests of faith whose purpose is not to increase despair but to bring about an intensification of hope increasing our experience of Christ’s resurrection power.

Conclusion

Whilst Christ calls his Church to be hope-filled the active hope of many Christians is dim.  We are in the midst of an intense spiritual war, and to understand this conflict we need to see that the enemy of God is not “flesh and blood” but evil spirit beings (Eph 6:12). Satan is a diabolical genius whose plan from Eden onwards is to deny God the Father of his rightful dignity (Eph 4:6). What better strategy could there be to degrade the image of Father than to degrade the image of fatherhood through scandals of various kinds of abuse.

The future the Christian Church in Australia hinges on a single revelation, “Christ in you the hope of glory” (Col 1:27). The indwelling Jesus is glorious because he never gave up in the age long battle between the true Father and the spirit of the anti-Father. Our triumphant Lord did not say, “Blessed are the peace lovers…”, he said “Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the sons of God” (Matt 5:9). It is urgent time that the leadership of the Church of God learn what it means to fight the warfare of the cross through the power of the resurrection (Phil 3:10).

The “Father of mercies and the God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3) is stirred up in this hour, stirred up because to remove the vision of his glorious future from his children is an act of cruelty.  God is not on the side of the sophisticated and arrogantly politically correct but on the side of all who know the experience of feeling broken, misunderstood, abandoned and not taken seriously by the powers that be (1 Cor 2:6-8). Our Father is on the side of those who are naturally speaking “no-hopers” but hope in God alone (Ps 62:5). Hope is the proper inheritance of the children of God (Eph 4:4). Jesus’ desire for each of us is to be filled with hope (Heb 6:11 cf. Prov 13:12), the hope that filled him with endless resurrection life and joy when everyone had given him, like us, up for dead.