CHAPTER NINETEEN
“THE JOY OF A HOLY HOPE!”
It’s so interesting, convicting, and illuminating to read the Book of Job, seeing the extremes of serious doubts and unbeliefs, but then to see a man coming into the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! There was a time period of doubts, fears, and unbelief, but by the grace and mercy and love of God Job became an overcomer, victorious through God’s faithful pursuit of his soul! In Job 42:5 we read Job saying to the Lord, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees You!” Verse 10 says, “And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends; also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”
In Job 31 Job highlighted the fatal, false steps of unbelievers who choose the ‘flesh walk’ totally void of the Spirit’s blessing, hearts ‘deceived’ and ending up experiencing ‘the consuming fire’, inheriting a consuming destruction, and rewarding one with spiritual bankruptcy eternally! I don’t know who said it, but I read in the “Encyclopedia of Religious Quotations”, (p.231), the following statement: “Life with Christ is an endless hope, without Him a hopeless end.” So very, very true! But there are many who refuse to answer God’s knock at their hearts’ doors, willfully, ignorantly slamming the heart’s doors when the Savior knocks!
“The Joy of The Holy Hope” but you choose a ‘faithless life’ that without Christ dissipates into a coveted state of eternal captivity under the control of the demons of Hell and Satan accepting you as their and his forever slave in darkness forever, separated from King Jesus and the Holy Father and the Holy Spirit who so desired to “guide you in all eternal Truth”? One never comes into the blessed state of life who never truly trusts in the eternal redemptive hope found in Christ’s crucifixion, His resurrection, and His ascension to the eternal throne of God patiently waiting for the full increase of redeeming grace manifested in the minds and hearts of all born-again-‘faithers’!!
As I write this truth I do so just a few weeks AFTER!! I’m sure if you’ve attended any churches you found some singing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem, The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” – And that’s about the celebration of the birth of Christ who came to “set the captives free” through His sacrificial death, His Resurrection, His present reign at the right-hand throne of God, and ‘His resting men and women’ who, yes, let Christ in them BE their hope of eternal glory!
Dare I say it? Believe I will! “Lost eternal hope is the fainting, falling, faithless life that “play-acts” life’s purpose as he, she refuses to answer Christ’s “knock” at their heart’s door!”
Are you aware that there are, sadly, multitudes world-wide who, yes, choose to live in a darkened, gray, indeterminate world of spiritual unbelief, no mindful consideration of revealed truth, no “fix” on eternal spiritual Truth, and, for them, absolutely no consideration of anything the Holy Spirit, God the Father, or Christ Jesus has to say, and certainly, for many, no consideration of anything Christians or churches have to say?!?
“Christ in you the hope of glory”? Yet multitudes live their lives independent of Holy God and His “Holy Hope”, living lives in “false hopes”, not lives established on the eternal Truths spoken by God! Multitudes ignore God’s holy knock on their hearts’ doors, certain in themselves but uncertain about heavenly help! Are YOU living your life on uncertain foundations? Consider several uncertainties!
One, consider the uncertainty of one’s trust in his/her conception of true beauty! Psalm 39:11 says, “When you with rebukes correct a man for iniquity, you make his beauty to consume away like a moth; surely every man (without God in Christ as his/her Savior and Lord) IS VANITY!”
Two, consider the shallowness of fleshly trust in men! Psalm 146:3 clearly says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help,” but put your trust only in God’s promises! How clear to you is 2 Corinthians 1:20? “All the promises of God in Christ Jesus are ‘yes’, and in Him “AMEN”, unto the glory of God.”
Three, consider the ‘fleshly pride’ in one’s self-allegiance that has no room for “trust in the finished work of Christ alone at Calvary”! In 2 Corinthians 1:9 Paul the Apostle said, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.” Men who are ‘fleshly alive’ and ‘preeminently alive’ in themselves exchange a false identity God never desired for them to be deceived in, and even for the ‘fool’, he says, “There is no God”, when forever and ever the Resurrected Lord and Savior reigns and keeps on reigning to the Father’s glory, honor, and praise!
Four, examine the reality of the troubling tombs of godless lives, yes, men/women, boys and girls, with “darkened hearts, warped wits, and worldly wills”, because there is eternal difference between ‘fleshly darkness’ and Christ Jesus God’s “Eternal Spiritual Light”!
Fifth, in 1 Thessalonians 2, Verses 4-13 we learn about our “calling” by Christ into His eternal Kingdom! Paul wrote: “But as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which tries our hearts. Foe neither at any time used we flattering words, as you know, nor a cloke of covetousness; God is witness: Nor of men sought we glory, neither of you, nor yet of others, whom we might have been burdensome, as the apostles of Christ.
But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children: So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because you were dear to us.
For you remember, brethren, our labor and travail; for laboring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblameably we behaved ourselves among you that believe:
As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father does his children, That you would walk worthy of God, who has called you unto His kingdom and His glory. For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when you received the word of God which you heard of us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually works also in you that believe.”
Dare I say it? Simply mental belief apart from full surrender to the Lordship of Christ with His “gift” of resurrection presence, eternal forgiveness, and new life, new purpose, new power, and new privilege, IS ‘head knowledge’ absent of a “new heart”! And that end result? Religious activities with open doors to Satan’s realm of deception rather than “kingdom allegiance” under the Banner of the Resurrected, Reigning, Royal King of kings and Lord of lords!
But because of grace that leads one to faith, as Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:13-15, we “gird up the loins of our minds, being sober (eternally seriously minded!!), and hoping to the end for the grace that is to be brought to us as Christ is revealed in us, As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in our ignorance; But as He which called us IS HOLY, so you be holy in all manner of conversation or your walk through the journey of your earthly pilgrimage with Christ as your Lord, your Savior, and your guardian presence with Christ in you!!
Do YOU truly have the spiritual understanding of reconciliation to Holy God in and through the blood sacrifice of Christ and His victorious resurrection, now continuing to reign at the right hand Throne of Holy God, yet telling us He also makes the redeemed heart His place of earthly residence? Do you daily take the sentence of death to your old man in order for the Resurrected, Reigning Christ to be Himself in you and through you?
Hear me! Living without “Christ in you” as Savior and Lord is to be a life residing in abiding, hellish darkness, not freed into the “Light” of Resurrection Presence!
I truly love what John Wesley wrote in his writing entitled “Christian Perfection”! Wesley said, “The holiest of men still need Christ as their Prophet, as “the light of the world.” For He does not give them light but from moment to moment; the instant He withdraws, all is darkness. They still need Christ as their King, for God does not give them a stock of holiness. But unless they receive a supply every moment, nothing but unholiness would remain. They still need Christ as their Priest, to make atonement for their holy things. Even perfect holiness is acceptable to God only through Jesus Christ.”
Much of modern-day ‘Christianity’ is based upon misdirected curiosity but with limited inquiry totally short of, yes, the divine revelation! Reject the mystery of Christ’s existence, or look upon Him as only a historic person and riddle of a past life short-lived for only about 33 years, and the mixed mess of examining Christ Jesus sadly surfaces for some as only an “inexplicable riddle”!
SO…what does one do with John 3:16? “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes (or Trusts) in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Blaise Pascal once said, “Jesus Christ is God to whom we can approach without pride, and before whom we may abase ourselves without despair.” Why? How? Because we understand through the revelation of God’s Holy Word that “all sinners were crucified with Christ on His Cross, buried with Him in His grave, but raised with Him through God’s power, released in us by, yes, our God-given faith and heart-led repentance, new-born, then filled with the Holy Spirit, and commissioned as His royal ambassadors! YES! We willfully crown Him in our hearts as “Lord of all”, you and me included because He called us, convicted us, converted us, anointed us, and declared us as His chosen, adoptive children in the Holy Family of God!!
Is it any wonder to you that “in Christ”, through the gifts of repentance and faith, that guided by the Holy Spirit you live royally blessed with the whole treasury that flows out of God’s heart, through His throne, through His Son, and, yes, through His born-again, new-birthed sons and daughters as the richness of His grace abounds, His graciousness embraces the true child of faith, and continues from one’s spiritual birth, to enrich their lives of faith with Heaven’s treasures??
Hear me! The Christian faith is not an intellectual theory or a self-centered speculation – it IS Christ’s Resurrection Presence living in the repentant heart and life resting in His promises! I grew up from early childhood of my home church in Cleveland, Tennessee, singing from the very old “American Hymnal” the hymn by R. Kelso Carter entitled “Standing On the Promises”, but you do know that far too many ‘professing Christians’ just “Sit On The Premises”, mindless of Christ’s intent of a repentant heart and faith-captured life becoming the Temple of His Holy Presence, yes, Christ in you, through you, as you daily take the sentence of death to yourself so that He might reign through you, extending His life, expressing His love, and proving His power! The Hymn?
“Standing on the promises of Christ my King, Thro’ eternal ages let His praises ring; Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing, Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail, When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail, By the living Word of God I shall prevail, Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord, Bound to Him eternally by love’s strong cord, Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword, Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I cannot fall, Listening every moment to the Spirit’s call, Resting in my Savior, as my all in all, standing on the promises of God.”
ARE YOU STANDING ON THE PROMISES OF GOD? The “Promises” are Merciful God’s “Creative Providence” in action, in you, for all around you to discover the Christ in you which can be their hope of eternal life, eternal rest, and eternal “Victory In Jesus”!! AMEN?
Once an outcast – but in Christ NOW a son or daughter in His redeemed, blood-bought family! Once living in darkness – but NOW living in the “Light” of His abiding Presence!
Once separated from God – but Christ’s coming, Christ’s Cross, Christ’s empty tomb, Christ’s “faithful knocking” at the hearts doors of all redeemed sons and daughters, Christ’s abiding presence and His constant, personal persuasion, blessedly favors us not to rest in “best effort, human trying” but trusting His Word: “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you”!!
In the old “American Hymnal” published in 1933 by the editor, Robert H. Colman, written by Fanny J. Crosby and W.H. Doane, is the hymn “Safe In The Arms of Jesus.” It says: “Safe in the arms of Jesus, There by His love overshadowed, Sweetly my soul shall rest. Hark! It’s the voice of angels, Borne in a song to me, Over the fields of glory, Over the jasper sea…Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on His gentle breast, There by His love overshadowed, Sweetly my soul shall rest.” Amen? Are YOU “Safe In The Arms of Jesus”? Proverbs 29:25 states, “The fear of man brings a snare; but whoso puts his trust in the Lord shall be safe,” followed by Verse 26 which says, “Many seek the ruler’s favor; but every man’s judgment comes from the Lord.”