Living Hope

Pastor Philip Miller: He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Friends, because endurance grows in the soil watered with hope. Endurance grows in the soil watered with hope.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Welcome to Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I’m Pastor Larry McCarthy, and we’re so glad you’re with us today and joining us in our series in Malachi. Now, Pastor Philip, there’s a connection, is there not, between endurance and hope? It’s not something we think about a lot, but there’s a link between them.

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah. So there’s a lot of hard things in life. And the reality is the only way we get through them is if we have a sense that it’s worthwhile. If I endure through this, there’s something on the other side that’s worth it. And that hope is what actually gives us the endurance we need to keep going, to get up in the morning and face another hard day.

A quick illustration of this: I was in college, and I was saving up for school and I was dating my wife and wanted to buy a diamond ring because we were going to get engaged. My summer job was horrible. I was working at this factory. It was hot, it was sweaty, it was tedious. And every day I got up and I thought, "I’m going to pay off my school, I’m going to get a ring, I’m going to marry Krista." And I just told myself that every day. And it gave me hope and it gave me a reason to endure and I could deal with the tedium and the hard assignment I was given because I had something to live for.

And the reality is as Christians, as followers of Christ, we have so much better hope. We have a redeemed creation, we’re going to be with our Savior and Lord and King forever more, we’re going to fall into His arms, and that blessed hope gives us deep endurance to face all the things that come our way in this life.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Endurance and hope. Well, let’s go now to the pulpit of the Moody Church as we discover what hope does in us. Now, beloved, this is part two of the sermon "Awaiting the Dawn". Grab your Bibles. Our text: Malachi chapter four, verses one through six.

Pastor Philip Miller: One day, the darkness will give way to the dawn. Healing will come to all creation with the rising of the Son of Hope. All right, Son of Hope. Now, the soil of hope. What difference does it make when this hope falls on the soil of your life? What difference does it make when hope rains down upon you and soaks into the soil of your life and saturates who you are? How does this hope change you?

Well, for one, it changes how we look back. It changes how we look back. Look at verse four: "Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel." See, if you know that evil will be vanquished, if you know that this cursed earth will be destroyed, that a new creation will dawn, and that the righteous will inherit the earth, you want to get on the right side of history.

And so you remember the law. You remember my servant Moses. This is language of the covenant. Remember, Moses came down Mount Sinai at Horeb with the Ten Commandments. He's the one who inaugurated the covenant. He brokered the covenant between God and the people where they promised to obey God and He promised to bless them for their obedience.

And Malachi is saying, "Remember." The Lord is saying, "Remember. You who remember who you are, remember your relationship with Me. You are My people. You are My sons, you are My daughters, you are members of My covenant, and I am preparing glory upon glory for you." And so I want you to live like it now. Remember who you are. Remember the covenant you’re in. Remember the law you are to keep.

Let this future hope remind you to walk before Me right here and right now in purity and holiness. 1 John 3 verses 2 to 3 say something very similar to New Testament believers like you and me, members of the new covenant in Christ’s blood. This is what John writes: "Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.

"But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself as He is pure." You see that. If you know you’re going to be glorious when you see Jesus face to face and are transformed into His image, if you know that’s coming, you start walking in purity right here and right now.

You see that because one day, friends, the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Matthew 13:43, words of Jesus. When hope like this sinks into the soil of our lives, it changes how we look back. It reminds us who we are. It reminds us to walk in purity and holiness before the Lord. But it also changes how we look ahead.

It changes how we look ahead. Look at verse five: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction."

Before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, you will get a final warning, a final grace, a final prophet. I will send you Elijah. And Elijah will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, the hearts of the children to the fathers. What’s with that phrase? If you do a quick study of that phrase in the Bible, you will always find it’s connected with spiritual revival and renewal.

When God’s people get right with God, they get right with one another. Those things are intimately connected. Love God, love people. Now, you’ll recall that Elijah was a prophet from the 9th century BC, many years before this prophecy is given. But he never died. It’s an interesting story. You can read about it in 2 Kings chapter two. He never died. He was taken up in a chariot of fire into heaven. God just snatched him up. Why?

Malachi chapter four is telling us why. Because God has more work for him to do. God’s not done with him yet. He’s going to send him back to prepare the way of the Lord. And when he comes, he’s going to bring spiritual revival and renewal to the people of God. God says, "You’ll return to Me and you’ll return to one another."

And just as the expectation of Messiah’s coming, Jesus, actually occurs in two phases, the first and second comings of our Lord Jesus Christ, Elijah’s coming also takes place in two phases. So, for example, we see the first stage of this fulfillment in John the Baptist. So if you read in Luke chapter 1 verse 17, Gabriel the angel announces the birth of John the Baptist and says he will come in the spirit and power of Elijah and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just and make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

And so Gabriel is saying, "This is him. This is the Elijah we’re talking about." Now, it’s interesting because John was not actually Elijah reincarnate. And so when they pressed him and they said, "Are you Elijah?" he said, "No." That’s in John 1:21. But later Jesus says in Matthew 11:13 to 14, "All the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if you’re willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come."

So Jesus says John is. Then a couple chapters later at the Mount of Transfiguration, when Jesus is glorified before His disciples, there are two individuals that stand atop the mountain with Jesus: Moses and Elijah. And the disciples go, "Wait a minute, I remember Malachi. This is a big deal," and they ask Jesus about it. This is how Jesus responds, Matthew 17:11 to 13: "Elijah does come, and he will restore all things.

"But I tell you, Elijah has already come and they did not recognize him." Then the disciples understood that He was speaking to them of John the Baptist. So John the Baptist is the first stage of fulfillment of this promise of the coming of Elijah. He prepared the way for the coming of the Lord, the first coming of the Lord.

And many scholars believe that the second stage of fulfillment of these promises of the coming of Elijah will take place as an individual, Elijah, comes to prepare the way for the second coming of the Lord. And we see a glimpse of this in Revelation chapter 11 verses 3 to 12 where we get the picture of these two witnesses at the end of the age, making one last extraordinary call to Israel to repent and to prepare for the impending judgment that is coming.

And one of those witnesses is almost certainly the final Elijah. He is described as having the power to shut up the sky so that no rain may fall, which is exactly what the 9th-century Elijah did in his day. So here’s the whole point, though. When this kind of hope soaks into your soul, into the soil of your life, it causes you to look back, to remember who you are, whose you are, to live in purity and holiness before Him.

It causes you to look ahead, to wait with eager expectation, to prepare yourself for the glories that are coming, to be ready, to not be caught off guard. And then the third thing it helps us do is it helps us look beyond. Look back, look ahead, look beyond. Remember, God’s people were in a terrible scrape, lousy circumstances. They were oppressed, they were weak, they were trampled, they were battered.

And with these promises, God is inviting them to look beyond their circumstances and lift their eyes to the horizon of everlasting hope. Because hope is the fuel of perseverance, and hope is the reason we keep going when all else seems lost. Viktor Frankl, who was the Austrian psychologist Holocaust survivor, wrote a famous book called *Man’s Search for Meaning*.

And he described the power of hope as he saw it functioning in the concentration camps that he was in. And he said those who had no reason to hope, no reason to live, they quickly broke down. They succumbed to disease more rapidly than anybody else and they withered away long before they died. He said, "But those who had hope, those who had a reason to live, they had family, friends, they had faith, they showed higher levels across the board of resilience, perseverance, and endurance."

And Frankl said this: "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Friends, because endurance grows in the soil watered with hope. Endurance grows in the soil watered with hope. I’ve long found it fascinating that the blues and the spirituals came out of the same soil of oppression. One of them hopeless, another one saturated with gospel hope.

What makes the difference? Hope makes the difference. Hope makes us look back and remember who we are. Hope helps us look ahead to remember all that God has promised. And hope helps us look beyond our circumstances to the glories that are awaiting us. 2 Corinthians 4:16 and 17: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.

"For this light and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." Romans 8:18: "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth being compared with the glory that will be revealed to us." At the risk of quoting too much from my favorite book, *The Lord of the Rings*, there’s another scene in *The Return of the King* where Sam is losing heart.

In the first scene I quoted from, Frodo’s losing heart. This time Sam’s losing heart, and Frodo can’t help him. And he’s lying there exhausted on the slag heaps of Mount Doom. And this is what we read: "There peeping among the cloud rack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.

"The beauty of it smote his heart as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end, the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach." Don’t you see, friends? Endurance grows in the soil watered with hope.

When you know there’s light and high beauty forever beyond the reach of the small and passing shadow, it gives you courage—courage to endure because hope has soaked into the soil of your life.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller. I’m Pastor Larry McCarthy. We’re glad you’re with us today as we dig deeper into courage and endurance. This is what hope gives us. Now, Pastor Philip, this hope that soaks into the soil of our souls, I need an example. You got an example?

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah. So there’s a guy I know. He was born, his legs were malformed. And so he’s been wheelchair-bound his whole life. And he’s a follower of Jesus. And a lot of times he’s asked the question just like, "Why? Why me? Why do other kids have legs that work perfectly fine and mine don’t?" And it’s hard. It’s a hard life. There’s things he can’t do, and there’s limitations and there’s pain related with it that’s just really hard.

When I talk with him, though, one of the things I love about him is he’s always pointing me to Jesus and the graces that Christ gives to him every day to endure. And he’ll always say, "You know, one day, I’m going to skip and run and jump in the presence of Jesus." He’s clinging to the resurrection hope and the glories that are coming.

And that vision before him gives him all kinds of endurance and strength to get up and keep going and to push the wheels on his chair and keep rolling forward because he knows one day all will be well. And Jesus will mend everything that’s been broken and he’ll get his legs back. Amen.

I think that’s a little glimpse, but all of us have brokenness. We all have things that are part of the curse of this world, that this world is broken. It’s not the way it's supposed to be. Our sinful nature is what broke the world, but now there’s just all kinds of collateral damage and various amounts of it hit us in life. We don’t have a lot of control over what happens to us, but we do have control over how we respond.

And I think when we take the brokenness we experience and put it in the hands of Jesus who knows brokenness—His hands are pierced, He knows pain, He knows brokenness—when we put the brokenness in His broken hands and we recognize there’s resurrection redemption that’s coming, He can take anything and make it whole. When we put all of that in His hands, that gives us hope.

It gives us hope that there’s more to come. And that allows us to keep going and step up into each moment. And there’s something deep there, isn’t there? There’s something visceral and strong that’s like to know there’s hope coming gives me courage and tenacity to pick up my cross and trudge uphill in the face of all the suffering that’s coming my way, knowing that there’s redemption and hope and glory coming through Jesus Christ.

And we’ve seen it. We’ve seen it in Jesus who went through the cross to resurrection glory. And if He bids us follow Him, we can pick up our cross and do the same, knowing that resurrection glory awaits us all.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Pastor Philip, I know we got to move forward, but I want to stay here for just a minute because this kind of hope, it’s more than just being cheerful all the time. There’s something more to this. It doesn’t ignore the pain. It’s more than just an attitude thing.

Pastor Philip Miller: Yeah. I mean, sometimes we think the solution is just to be a cheery optimist. The glass is half full, there’s always a silver lining to every storm cloud. Just be happy, happy, happy, and if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Don’t clap. No clap.

Pastor Philip Miller: But there’s a shallowness to that. It’s thin because to be that cheery optimistic is to ignore the depths of the darkness and the pain. And the Bible doesn’t do that. The Bible looks into the pit of our suffering and it sees all the darkness, all the groaning, all the weariness of this broken world that made Jesus come down and die on a cross.

The Bible does not look away from our suffering, and yet it ignites the fire of hope that pierces down into the darkness with the ray of the gospel that is just coming in. There’s hope that’s going to come out of all this darkness. And I love sunrises and sunsets. They look similar.

There’s darkness and there’s light on the horizon, but it matters very much whether the light is fading or whether the light is growing. And the reality is we live on this side of the resurrection, and that means we’re on the sunrise side of history. And the light will grow and it will cover the entire earth. Glory is on the horizon. And that means you can get up and face it all.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Amen. As a senior pastor, I want you to speak to those pastors who may be listening to us today or those who are in serving in churches. Cast the vision of what this hope would look like in the church today. If we had the hope that we’re talking about here and that’s in our churches today, what would that church look like?

Pastor Philip Miller: Well, I think this is in many ways what the ministry of the Word of God does in our lives. The Word of God is that message of hope. It’s like the white star that Samwise saw on the slag heaps. When everything grew dark and his hope was fading, there was a star of light that pierced through the shadow into his own heart.

And that’s what the Scriptures do as we open them every single week. It is a message of God’s resurrection hope that is piercing through all the shadow and the suffering we face. This is what the community of the body of Christ is here for. We need each other. I will lose hope in the midst of what I suffer in life. You’re going to lose hope.

And so if we can come together and we can encourage one another and press into each other’s lives and remind each other of our resurrection hope, of the faithfulness of God, of the promises that will be fulfilled, we can help each other hope again. And this is the reality. We need each other. We need the gospel.

We need the Word of God. We need pastors and ministers, and we need people who can constantly point to each other this resurrection gospel hope in the midst of all the darkness. So we are a community that gathers. Jesus is the light of the world, and that light is ours in Christ. And as we remind each other of the light, we bear that light into the world.

And that’s the hope that we have. And so this is really the ministry of all of God’s people together. This is the ministry of the church.

Pastor Larry McCarthy: Amen. Hope produces endurance and courage. Oh, be encouraged today, beloved. Hope really is the oxygen of the soul. It gives us the courage to endure light and momentary afflictions because we know they are preparing us for glory.

To remain steadfast in our hope, we have to stay awake to grace. That’s why we’re offering the book *The Grace Awakening* by Chuck Swindoll. Many of us are weary because we’re still trying to live by a list of shoulds, falling back into a religious treadmill. But the gospel is about relationship, beloved, not ritual.

This book helps you identify those grace-killers that rob you of your joy and confidence in Christ. Now, whether you’re feeling weighted down by the pressure of life or needing to be reminded of God’s grace, this resource points you back to the Giver of all good grace. It’s an invitation to live a life of endurance characterized not by our efforts, but by His enabling power.

And when you join the awakening, you’ll see how grace changes literally everything. This program is made possible because of generous supporters just like you. Moody Church Media is sharing gospel resources with hearts and homes across the country.

As a thank you for your gift today, we’d love to send you *The Grace Awakening* for a donation of any amount. To request your copy, simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call 1-800-215-5001. You can also write to us at Moody Church Media, 1635 North LaSalle Drive, Chicago, Illinois, 60614.

Now, next time we’ll explore the glories of heaven. Thanks for joining us on Living Hope, where you’ll always find gospel truth for the journey of a lifetime. Living Hope is a production of Moody Church Media and is sponsored by the Moody Church.