Title: God of Hope / Romans 15:13
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
1. Hope is essential for human life.
A few years ago, the Hankook Ilbo had a huge loss due to a fire. I still remember the words of the late Jang Ki-young, the founder of the company at that time. "To lose wealth from a person is a great loss. And to lose a person is a greater loss. But to lose hope is to lose everything."
If there is one thing that a person cannot give up until the end in life, it is hope.
This time, we saw that the people who were rescued after the Sampoong Department Store collapsed and were buried were miraculously revived because they did not lose their hope of life even in extreme circumstances.
If there is hope that he can rise again from the ashes, he will rise again, but if there is no hope from the ruins of the ashes, he cannot stand up forever.
In God's Word, there are three things that we must always have, and what they are is that faith, hope, and love are the three things we must always have. He also said that <hope> should always be there.
If we live our whole lives, we will encounter cases where the line we believed in many times is broken.
We often see cases where a beloved wife or husband who we had been living with for a hundred years dies first, a successful business suddenly fails, and various lines of trust are broken. However, even in all these cases, if only one line of hope is not broken, we can overcome everything and live again.
Therefore, the Bible says 'hope is the anchor of the soul'.
A ship without an anchor cannot withstand storms. It ends up shipwrecked. Likewise, without hope, our souls are lost, wandering, discouraged, and shipwrecked in the sea of sin. Look at the psychology of people who commit suicide today. Why would they want to end their precious lives? It may be because there is no hope.
However, looking at it, it seems that there are more and more people living in discouragement than <People living in hope>. Obviously, people are enjoying the benefits of scientific and material civilization that people have never seen or had in the past, but I don't know why there are more people living in worry and worry than people living in hope.
"Are you doing well these days, meeting someone you know?" If you say, "What a recession." "Business did not work and all small and medium-sized enterprises like us were closed"...
Few people say, "It's going well", "I'm excited" and "I'm feeling really lean these days." It's really weird. Obviously, compared to the past, salaries have risen, and home appliances have been brought in, telephones, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.... Isn't that strange, what would it be?
What we are thinking about here is not that there is really no hope, but where did we build that hope? I am doing
2. Where should the foundation of hope be laid? is.
It is because the foundation of hope must be strong so that we do not become discouraged. However, most of them believe in their abilities and put their hopes in them. It means that you only believe in your own head and live. Others live on wealth and on the basis of all hope. Others try to base their hopes on their health.
Everyone has their own reasons for hope. If you look closely at all of this, all of them are things of the visible world. It is something you can touch and see.
However, according to the Word of God, "You shall not love the world or the things in the world, it is not from God." This means that you should not base your hope on such things. These must first be by-products after God, and when that is the goal, it is always discouragement and despair.
That's why today's text says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
Even the psalmist said, "In You is my hope."
Psalm 62:5 says, "My soul, wait in silence for God alone! For my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock, and my salvation, and my fortress; I will not be moved." .I said, 'Only me is my hope'. In other words, God is my only hope.
If we look at the reasons for our discouragement, it is saying that hope is destroyed when those things are destroyed because they are not God, but hope in people, hope in wealth, and the future in our own abilities.
One of the reasons for discouragement is because they try to live by leaving God for the last time. We should have failed to seek God, if we had been sick we should have called on God, otherwise would we have come before God? Please take a moment to reflect on yourself.
We are the people who realized that the foundation of hope is only in God at the time of 6.25. What happened when you lived your life with hope in wealth, land, and house? What were your feelings at that time while you were on the evacuation line? Aren't we the ones who said, "Only in You is my hope"?
Everyone! When you read the book [City of God], the book of Augustine of the famous medieval church, [Kingdom of God] [City of God], you see Rome's splendid culmination of earthly power on fire, while watching the eternal kingdom of God. There is a scene where we look at God with spiritual eyes, and we know that we too must become God's people who can see the eternal kingdom.
Everything in this world is so trivial that it will burn. There is no basis for hope.
3. Then why should God be the foundation of our hope? Because of his eternity.
Because he is <alpha> and <omega>, first and last. If the basis of our hopes are things that change with time and end with time, all of them will be disappointing, but only God is eternal.
Health, knowledge, fame, wealth, authority, popularity, all these things change with time. Even mountains and streams change with time. If you base your hope on such things, you will be in despair along with such things.
However, since God existed before history, is active in history, and watches over the end of mankind as the judge of history, those who put hope in Him are blessed.
The history of Christianity has been passed down through the blood of martyrs in the midst of persecution and persecution. On the surface, it looked like it had almost disappeared, but it was because they put their hope in God that they were able to survive despite the harsh persecution. It is because there was a confession of faith that said, 'My hope is only from him, and I come.'
The only reason that the Israelites in the Old Testament were able to survive the 70 years of captivity in Babylon was that they lived by praying to God three times a day, and that the early Christians were able to overcome even after living in the underground tombs for 300 years under the tyranny of Rome. It was because they made God the basis of their hope.
45 years passed between 6.25 and 45 years, caused by Kim Il-sung, the monster of the materialistic communist party that says there is no God, and a war criminal of genocide. He also died and went into the ground. After all, like all dictators, it is undoubtedly true that those who follow will be buried with time. Therefore, we must put our hope in God.
As the first and the last, God is watching the beginning and the end of all history. We must not forget that dictators, no matter how much, are inclined to lean when the time is right. Therefore, Moses also said, "Lord! You have become a dwelling place for our generations. Before the mountains were created, before you formed the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity you are God."
Not only that, but it is because of his immutability that we base our hope on God. Everyone changes. A person's firm promises can change with time. However, God's promises do not change.
God loves us believers, not because we have merits to be loved, but because he loves us first and his love does not change. If God were the kind of God who loves us as much as we do, we must have been enemies with Him several times already. Therefore, since it is God's unchanging promise, it can be the basis of our hope.
Isaiah 43:1 says, "I have called you by name, and you are mine. Therefore do not be afraid. If you pass through waters, the water will not drown you; if you pass through fire, the fire will not consume you. Do not be afraid. I will be with you. Do not be dismayed, I will be your God."
This covenant is the word that God gave to us first and is faithfully keeping. The living proof of this covenant is the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He has already given eternal life to those who believe in the blood of Christ and has kept them from coming into judgment. And now he has made us children of God, not slaves to sin.
Everyone! Even if a physical child is born, it cannot be said that the child is a child even if he is good, a child even if he is bad, and not a child. If you don't listen, you can say, 'You should try your best', but just as parents are unable to sleep because of their son, God's love is more than that. Therefore, even if all the lines of hope in the world are cut off, even when the last breath is raised, God's love does not change.
The parable of God's love is that when he saw the prodigal son returning after spending all his portion, he ran and hung his head and kissed him, put on a new robe, put on gold rings, and slaughtered an ox to a feast. The last hope is only in God. Only those who realize this kind of love, then how will I live? comes to a conclusion.
Everyone! So, what is the greatest sin before God today? It is a sin to deny the God of hope, despair, and become discouraged. Despair is a sin.
If it is the parent's heart that even if the child is upset, they do not remember all their faults in the past, as long as they set their minds to return, so is God. So what would be the biggest disobedience? Wouldn't that be a disgraceful thing that hurts the hearts of the most parents if a grown-up said that they had no hope of living in front of their parents and decided to commit suicide?
Even before God, if people who believe in this way complain that they can't live or die, that's the biggest sin. We believers can never be discouraged.
We need to re-examine the words of today's text. "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."