06/24/2001

Let us bow in prayer:

Father, as we stand before you this morning, we thank you that you are a God who brings us eternal life through Jesus Christ. Father, it is your gift to us as a result of our faith in you and our trust in you. We thank you Father that we can commemorate this death on the cross by receiving the elements of communion. We thank you Father that you love us so much that you gave your son to die on the cross that we might have life. Father, we just thank you so much that you are a God worthy of our praise, worthy of our love and our honor. In Jesus name. Amen.

If you have ever had the opportunity to prepare for a sermon, which a few of you have and most of you haven’t, you’ll know that when you begin to prepare you quite often go one direction and then end up going a different direction and even when you are in the middle of presenting it you find that things come into our head that you hadn’t thought of during the preparation and insights or applications that you hadn’t thought of beforehand. As I was studying for this one this morning I got some seeds started and things began to take place and it is like oh no which way shall I go. So this morning if you don’t mind I don’t have a clue what we are going to talk about. OK, I’m over prepared so as long as you got till about noon we are all set.

Actually I want to just talk about one word, that makes it easy. One word. This is the one word that Christians ought to be know by. Well there is a number of them but this is j one of. Jesus said that we should be know by our love, of course. So that is the primary thing but in terms of how people interact with us and how they see us as a person whoever it might be one of the best words that ought to describe us is HOPE. Because we have a hope that nobody else can have. Because Jesus said “I am the way to truth and life and so I comes to the Father but through me” and so hope is only in Christ. Eternal hope, the hope of salvation is, Biblically, only in Jesus Christ. Many people who now days believe that there are many roads and they all lead to heaven and it doesn’t matter which one you take. The Bible does not claim that. The Bible does not say that. The Bible doesn’t say as long as you are trying, as long as you hope to get there we will probably get there. The Bible says, “NO”. There are many, there’s a wide way that leads to destruction and a narrow way that leads to life. Many find the wide path but few find the narrow path. It is free, it is not hard to understand it is simple, it is not easy but it is truly the only way of salvation. So we do not preach that all roads lead to heaven. In my Sunday School Class we are reading, studying the book of Romans, just getting into the study and we heard the phrase of course and used the phrase that all roads lead to Rome. In those days they all did, they had a whole huge road system and all of them actually did come to Rome as the spooks of a wheel. Because Rome was the center of the known world at that time. Well, that is not how it works with heaven. All roads do not lead to heaven, only one does. And that ought to be the thing that characterizes us more than anything is an attitude of hope. Hope, Biblically, is not a kind of I hope, I hope, I hope kind of thing. It is actually an assured hope in a guaranteed future. An assured hope in a guaranteed future. We ought to live in that hope. We ought to have the most wonderful, most positive, most blessed attitude about everything in life because of that hope that we have in Jesus Christ.

And that leads to other word I want to use today which is Attitude. Or as my grandson calls it at-ti-tude. At-ti-tude. By the way, I am sad today because my daughter and her husband, I’ll blame him, son-in-law, took my two grandson’s to Pennsylvania for five weeks. OK, so I am having grandson withdrawal pains and my wife is on a two week long horse ride and she is in the middle of it so she is gone for another week. But at least I get to see her. I saw her yesterday at family reunion and I’ll see her tomorrow at horse camp. So I am bacheloring it for awhile and I am absent of grandkids right now so it is kind of painful existence so I hope you feel sorry for me. I’ll try not to look to contrite.

The attitude is the view, kind of like the glasses we see life through. The attitude is really the direction of the heart. What you really believe is how you tend to view life. So our attitude really and our hopeful attitude, as Christians, stems from our understanding of God. So attitude starts with what attitude we have about God. Of course, later on what attitude we have about ourselves and about other people. We will talk about those later, but just today I want to talk about our attitude that is developed from our view.

The first greatest commandment is that you should love the Lord your God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. The question is do we love God? Well, a lot of you have difficulty loving God for one reason or another. Another area is do we trust God? Do we believe God and do we honor God. Those are the four areas I want to talk about this morning.

Do we love God? Do we really love God? Our love for God, I believe, is built on about three or four different things. One is upon the fact that we understand his love for us. Love is often times are response to love. In 1st John it tells us that we love because God first loved us. So we understand God because of his love for us. God demonstrated his love for us while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. 1st John says, See how great a love the Father has for us that we should be called the children of God. And such we are in Christ. So the first thing our love is built upon is our understanding of God’s love for us. For God so loved the world that he gave is only begotten Son that we should not perish but have everlasting life. We understand God’s love through the truth that God has told us about himself that the actions he has taken in our behalf. If we really understand what God has done for us and his great love for us, then we respond in love.

We also respond to God because of his great provision, because God has provided for us, he has given us things, he have given us life and family and he has given us the different things we have in life. So his provision to us is also part of our responsive love. So when we look at his provisions, by the way, are attitudes deliberate or are they a response? Our they an action or reaction? Action, not a reaction. We tend to react but we can also change, sometimes you won’t. Attitude is really not an emotion, it is a deliberate viewpoint that we take. If we really understand God we determine to live in Hope. Not because of circumstances but because of the truth of God. The character of God, his provisions, his works, his creation. We begin to understand and love God because of what he has done.

Another aspect of our love for God is based upon the realty of the enormity of his forgiveness for us as individuals. When we really understand the gravity of our own sin and the enormity of his forgiveness we love him more. Now, this is illustrated in Jesus’ experience with the publican, he want to his home and the lady came and started washing his feet and the publican said “Hey don’t you understand who she is, she is a great sinner here? Jesus said “Wait a minute here Simon when I came you didn’t wash my feet, you didn’t anoint me, you didn’t greet me with a kiss. You didn’t do any of the normal greetings that anybody should do when a guest is in the home but this lady has come and she has kissed me, and she has greeted me, and washed my feet, she has done all of these things and you didn’t even do those even though she is a great sinner. He said now let me ask you this question. If a man owes $500 and another owes $5 or $50 and they are both forgiven, which one is more grateful? Simon said, of course the one who is forgiven the most would be most grateful.. That is true, Jesus said we have spoken truly. If we think we have only sinned this much and so therefore God has only forgiven us that much how grateful are we? Not much. But if we understand the gravity of our sin the fact that our sin would cost us our eternity and God has forgiven us those sins and we now have the hope in Christ, we love God this much. Infinitely so. Gods say we loves us with an everlasting love, with a limitless love. How much should our love be for God then? These are based upon facts. It is an attitude that we chose to take toward God that we love because of who he is because of his love for us, because of his provision, because of his forgiveness but can we trust God? Do we have an attitude for trust of God when he speaks we listen. When he speaks we are ready to accept what he says and to do what he says and to trust his character. Many people have trouble trusting God because of life. Remember Job had many riches, many children and all in one day they were taken away. If you have read the book of Job you know the story. Remember what Job’s response was? “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed to the name of the Lord”. What was Job’s wife’s response? “Curse God and die”. OK, you can take either attitude when trouble hits. You can say God I hate you for this or you can say hmm life was a gift from God anyways so I’ll take what he gives me and I’ll love him anyway. Blessed me the name of the Lord. Joseph was a young man who had number of nasty brothers and I have a feeling he was a nasty little brother too. And they sold him into slavery to the traveling salesman of the day and they took him to Egypt and sold him to the Pharaoh. Potiphar was actually a friend of Pharaoh and so he was enslaved for a number of years and then spent two years in jail and finally his brothers came from there country because there was no food left and they came to Egypt because they had lots of food there under Joseph’s direction and insight and they came begging food when they found out who he was they were afraid for their lives because they thought he would try to kill them because they tried to kill him. Remember what Joseph’s words were? You meant it for evil, God meant it for good. Because of there evil acts God actually turned it and brought salvation to the people of Israel. Brought life to the people of Israel because God had a plan in spite of man’s evil plan. So we look at God and all the evil things and nasty things that happen to us, financial set backs, the end of jobs, death, even sickness all these things we would humanly say what is wrong with you God? You are not good after all. When God might say give me time. You will understand later. And when you do trust him anyway because we need to learn to trust his character because God says “All things work together for good to those who love God and who are called according to his purpose says I am here for your welfare not for your harm. He says if you ask me, if your son asks for a fish would you give him a stone or a serpent if he ask for bread would you give him a stone. Can’t I, the Father, give you much better things? God cares for us. Cast our cares upon him because he cares for us. So we can trust God and we ought to live in that trust. In the trust that God does have our eternal and even temporal welfare on his heart because we are his children. So those all translate into hope and an attitude that people ought to see.

How about believing? Can we believe God? Can we believe God when he speaks? Of course, we can. One of the most interesting studies you can ever do, is to study fulfilled prophecy. Study fulfilled prophecy. Really one of the most interesting studies. There is and old, old, old book out called “Many Convincing Proofs”. And a newer book many actually, Josh McDowell’s book “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” is a good one also that does the same thing. It takes Old testament prophecies and shows how they are fulfilled in the New Testament or in there own day. Some of the most fascinating ones are the City of Tyre, the City of Sidon, a number of other cities, the City of Jericho, Cities that there were specific prophecies made and over years, sometimes hundreds of years the prophecies came true exactly as said. The Bible said in the Old Testament that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem. Guess where he was born. He would be born of a virgin. Guess where he was born. He would hang on the cross. Guess where he was killed. They said that they would do a number of things on the cross, said his hands would be pierced, his side pierced and in the Old Testament it was written back in Psalm 22 or 24 the Psalm of the cross. All these things the Psalmist could not have understand because they were not even a fact of life in his day. Crucifixion did not come about until the Romans did ,hundred of years later, and so many of the things that the authors wrote I sure they did not have any understanding of but they came true one by one exactly as were prophesied. Can we believe God when he speaks about our life? Of course, we can. He has been found true to his word, true to himself every time, all the time. So when he speaks can we believe him. Yes. If he says Jesus Christ is the only way, the truth, the life can we believe him? Yes. He says there is no other name under heaven where by name must be saved. Can we believe him? Yes. Jesus said when he was ask by the opposers in his day they said Now who gives you authority to speak and he says, Well my authority comes from God and if you destroy this temple, speaking of his body, I’ll raise it up in three days. That is my authority. The proof of the resurrection. The disciples said later on remember, Oh that’s what he was meaning by this. That the proof of everything that he said being true because he was resurrected from the dead. Can we believe him when his word says something. Of course, we can. Read Psalm 19, read Psalm 119. the Bible says the word of God is tested and never found wanting. It is always true in every aspect.

Do we honor him? Do we honor God? How is the best way to honor God? Well Paul tells us in Romans Chapter 12, “I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies. A living sacrifice to him. Which is a holy, acceptable, reasonable act of service”. Our best worship is when we give ourselves to God in obedience. Our worship services declare that by singing songs, by saying things, by coming together corporately to honor God. We have services that include worship and are designed for that but our true worship is when we give ourselves to him in obedience. In honoring him, submitting ourselves to his instructions, to his directions. Can we honor him or do we honor him? Often times, NO, because we sometimes honor ourselves over him.. When he gives us direct commands do we follow them or do we kind of go, well it’s really inconvenient right now, maybe later. Or I’d really prefer to do this thing so I’ll assume or presume upon your forgiveness God and so, that is a dangerous thing by the way, in fact it says in the Old Testament, “Please keep me from presumptuous sin”. Presumptuous sin means when a person knows it is wrong and says I know it is wrong but I think I’ll go ahead and do it because after all God is a forgiving God. That is a presumptuous sin. You are presuming upon God’s grace to forgive you ahead of time for the sin you plan to comment. Those are dangerous ones by the way. Because God says be careful about willful sin. That is when we know it is wrong and do it anyway and accept the fact that hey God will forgive me for it. Because then we have turned ourselves against God by declaring that we are going to be disobedient to a know command. That is a dangerous thing. Because God says at the point we begin to turn his ear away from us. In Isaiah he says Be careful that you don’t to that because I won’t be able to hear your prayers when we start using ourselves to go the wrong direction instead of the right direction. So Paul says give your bodies to God. It is a reasonable, acceptable act of worship. It is what God requires. It said You glorify God in your body because he is paid for you, we have been bought with a price so therefore glorify God in your body.

So what kind of attitude do you carry in life? Do you have such a hopeful attitude that people look at you and go there is something about that person that I like. There is some, they might not know a thing about what you believe but they look you and say, there is something about that person. Or when they talk about anything do you kind of have a pessimistic, kind of like the pessimist, somebody said is like the guy who swallowed an egg. Because he really doesn’t want to walk around because it might break but he doesn’t want to sit down because it might hatch. So a pessimist is somebody who doesn’t do much of anything because of a negative attitude, they sure nothing can be done so they are not even going to try. I’ll tell you what, Christians who have negative attitude don’t build great ministries. They don’t trust God for big things because they assume they can’t do big things. They know what the Bible says but they are sure that he can’t do it in our lifetime. Sure he can, sure he can. You know people that you are sure God can’t save but God doesn’t have the same attitude. If you had the power of God would you ever be negative? No, because you have the power of the universe. You could create another universe if you needed to. You could create this, you could create that you, can do anything you want to. God is on his own self sustaining has all power of everything. So I doubt if he ever has a negative moment, but since we are under his power we sometimes distrust him. Sometimes we don’t believe him, sometimes we don’t honor him, sometimes we don’t love him and people see that. People see that. We are to be the most hopeful people on earth because we are truly the only people on earth who have hope. If that is not reflected through our eyes, through our voice, through our demeanor, through our attitude nobody sees hope in us and they assume we have no hope. Interesting passage back in 1st Thessalonians, you don’t need to turn to it because it is very familiar. Paul says “I do not want you to grieve my brethren as to the rest you have no hope”. And if you have been to any funerals that I have preached I have said this a number of different times in different funerals. An interesting epitaph in Thessalonica city, Thessalonica, was that there was a belief that once we leave this earth there is nothing beyond. We just end. The only thing beyond this life is memory and that’s it and memory of those who are alive. And so people actually put on the epitaph as there epitaph “ NO HOPE” because they believe there is nothing beyond this life. There is no hope. Paul says, “Don’t grieve like those who have no hope”. They have no hope, we have hope. That is one of the most comforting things that we have hope in Jesus Christ. Not only comforting the face of death but comforting in the face of life. But if we don’t have that attitude we don’t have that shine that says I have hope in Christ. Who wants what we have? Who wants what we have? They ought to see in us such a glow, such an enjoyable person because of our hope in Christ that they would be warmed by the fire of our hope. So what kind of attitude do you carry? Let’s carry a good one.

Let’s bow our heads:

Father, we thank you that you have given us hope. We have the potential of hope in Jesus Christ. We have not given us the opportunity to go any way we want to and eventually end up in heaven just because we hope to get there. No you have said there is a way. There is a truth and a life and it is Jesus Christ. He is the one who has provided the way. You are the one who created us and who has been truth worthy and truthful in everything you have ever said. Never once lying to us so when you say it is Jesus or nobody then it has got to be Jesus. And so Father we pray that might be true in every heart this morning. That we have truly accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and that we reflect therefore that hope in all of life. We can have that hope and yet still be dower and sower and have long faces and look pretty unhappy. Father help that we never to the case with us. Help us live in such hope that our outlook is always positive because of you. We have an attitude that people are attracted to because of you and we could name you as the one who is our hope. You tell us in 1st Peter, we should always be ready to explain to anybody who asks the hope that lies within us. Father you are that hope in Jesus Christ, help us to live in that hope. 
In Jesus name Amen.

HOME