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Ninteenth Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, October 19, 2014


Faith, Hope and Love, the Christian Dynamic


Text: I Thessalonians 1:2-3

There is a trinity in our life that is almost as familiar as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That trinity is Faith, Hope and Love. We find these three Christian virtues linked together several times in the New Testament. The most famous is in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, the chapter on love, which says, “These three abide, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:13; see also Galatians 5:6)

We came across an instance of this trinity today in our reading from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. It’s in verses 2 and 3, in which Paul is giving thanks for the people of this church, which he and Silas had planted some time before. He says,

We give thanks to God always for you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s linger over this trinity, Faith, Hope and Love this morning. And in particular, I am going to look at the dynamic interaction of the three. I call this the Christian Dynamic, for faith leads to hope, and hope frees us up to love.

The Thessalonian Church was undergoing persecution at the time Paul wrote this letter to them. It was in about the year 51, less than two decades after the ascension of Jesus. The Thessalonian church had been born in persecution. You can read about it in Acts, Chapter 17. Yet in the midst of the attacks and the threats and the hardship, these people had come to faith. And they had hung onto their faith through it all. And they had been powerful witnesses to the Gospel in their region. Their faith in God is what gave them the hope that allowed them to continue on, and to reach out in love to others. They were known for their love.

This is the Christian Dynamic, the positive, energizing, driving power of Christ, alive in us. You can see the dynamism in the fact that faith, hope and love all reach beyond ourselves.

•Faith reaches upward to God.

•Hope reaches forward to God’s promised future.

•Love reaches outward to others.

It all begins with faith. Faith gives us the knowledge of the character of God. And because of the perfection of God’s character, we live not in despair, but in hope. And because we have hope, we do not have to obsess about our own needs and desires, or our future. Rather, we are free to focus on the needs of other people, whom God calls us to love.

So what is faith? Some would tell us that faith is an unexplainable willingness that some people have to believe something they cannot prove. That is a terribly mistaken definition. It makes faith sound mindless and naïve. Faith is not mindless; and it is not naïve. Faith has to do with our search for truth. It has to do with our grasp of reality. It is not just something we believe that works for us, but may not ultimately be real. Faith is a penetration into reality. Faith is an openness to God that allows Him to show us the truth.

And don’t let anyone tell you that there is an unbridgeable gap between faith and reason. God made us in His image, and that means, among other things, that we are intelligent, reasoning, thinking beings. Reason brings us to a knowledge of God. The original object of science was to discover the realities of God and of His creation. In our time, some like to say that science has disproven God. That is nonsense. If anything, science is more and more pointing us to God. It is the assumptions many scientists make that make them want to look anywhere but to God to explain what they are seeing. Faith is not the absence of reason. It is the proper ordering of reason. Romans 12:2 tells us that we must not be conformed to this world, but we must be transformed... by what? By the renewing of our minds. We don’t check our minds at the door. We have our minds open to God so that He can reveal His truth to us.

That is faith. And faith has two dimensions to it. One is what you believe and the other is how you act. If we believe in God, it means we understand and accept the truth. But that isn’t all there is to fiath. The big question is, do we live as if we truly believe that God is who He says He is?

•Do we stake our lives on that truth?

•Do we conduct ourselves as if we believe that God is intimately involved in our lives?

•Do we trust that He is going to do what He has promised?

If so, we live in hope. That is the second leg of this dynamic trinity.

Hope isn’t as we often portray it. The formula used on many TV game shows is that the contestant has to choose among a number of boxes or doors or curtains which hide the prize. Some prizes are very valuable, and some are worthless. The contestants make their choice. And as they wait for the contents to be revealed, they say, “I hope, I hope, I hope.” This is not the hope we are talking about in the Bible. Biblical hope is not blind hope that lady luck will smile on you today. Biblical hope is based on the knowledge of the truth that God has revealed to us.

To have the hope of which the Bible speaks is to look forward expectantly to God’s future activity. What we know God has done in the past, and what He has said He is going to do in the future, are so powerfully reassuring that we can endure all kinds of things in the present that would lead others to give up in despair.

J.C. Ryle, a 19th Century Anglican bishop, showed the power of this hope in one of his books, where he said:

God...has...shown His perfect knowledge of human nature, by spreading over the [Bible] a perfect wealth of promises, suitable to every kind of experience and every condition of life... The subject is almost inexhaustible. There is hardly a step in man’s life, from childhood to old age, hardly any position in which man can be placed, for which the Bible has not held out encouragement to everyone who desires to do right in the sight of God. There are “shalls” and “wills” in God’s treasury for every condition. About God’s infinite mercy and compassion,--about His readiness to receive all who repent and believe,--about His willingness to forgive, pardon, and absolve the chief of sinners, about His power to change hearts and alter our corrupt nature,--about the encouragements to pray, and hear the gospel, and draw near to the throne of grace,--about strength for duty, comfort in trouble, guidance in perplexity, help in sickness, consolation in death, support under bereavement, happiness beyond the grave, reward in glory—about all these things there is an abundant supply of promises in the Word. No one can form an idea of abundance unless he carefully searches the Scriptures.... [J.C. Ryle, Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties and Roots (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids 1979 (originally 1850-53))]

We can keep our joy in the midst of affliction. We can remain on solid footing, even when things don’t go our way, because we know, as the Psalmist said, God’s love is better than life. (Psalm 63:3) And we know that God’s plans for those who love Him are perfect. (See Romans 8:28; I Corinthians 2:9)

Bill and Gloria Gaither’s hymn (1971) captures it for us:

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow.
Because he lives, all fear is gone.
Because I know He holds the future,
and life is worth the living just because he lives.

That is the Christian hope.

No one can live without hope. But, if you don’t believe in the truth that God has revealed to us, what do you put your hope in? You have nothing to put your hope in but human activity:

•Your own excellence and strength.

•The promises of others whom you may or may not be able to trust.

•The cooperation of others with your agenda, which may well clash with theirs.

•You hope the random acts of violent and dishonest people will happen to someone else.

The Christian hope doesn’t depend on any of that. Because we know God and what He has done and what He has promised, we look forward to what His promised future holds:

•He has overcome evil.

•Death is not the end. We will rise again to eternal life.

•Sin does not have the final word.

-God is healing us from the destructive effects of sin in our lives.

-He is transforming us day by day to make us more like Jesus. (2 Corinthians 3:18)

•Jesus will come again in glory.

And down through the ages, Christians have lived extraordinary lives because they had that hope.

•How else would a Mother Teresa be able to live for 50 years in the slums of Calcutta ministering to the poorest of the poor in their hour of death?

•How else would the wives and sisters of missionaries who were murdered by the Indians of Ecuador go back into the jungle and carry on their work?

•How else would Christians in Muslim countries face death rather than to deny their faith in Jesus?

This week, we will begin a new course of study at the Tuesday night Bible Study at the church. It is called the Truth Project, which is a ministry of Focus on the Family. The author and presenter of the DVD series is Dr. Del Tackett. Everyone is invited to join us for this 12- week study. Dr. Tackett’s first lesson is titled, “What is Truth?” And in that lesson, he raises this haunting question: “Do I really believe that what I believe is really real?”

There are lots of “reallys” and “reals” in that sentence. But the reason is that it is about reality. And if you really believe that what you believe is really real, it is going to transform the way you live.

•You will live in the Christian hope.

•It will affect your moral behavior.

•It will affect what interests you.

•It will affect how you spend your time.

•And it will set you free.

-Free to turn yourself over to God for Him to do what He wants to do with your life.

-And free to stop being so concerned about yourself and start reaching outward toward others with the love of Jesus. That is the third leg of this dynamic trinity of faith, hope and love.

Are you living in that freedom today? Is your faith so real that you have peace about the future? Are you at such peace that you are reaching out in love to the least, the last and the lost? To your enemy? To your brother and sister in the congregation? This Christian dynamic of faith, hope and love is not simply a matter of intellectual interest. It is a useful indicator for diagnosing how we are doing in our spiritual health. If we are failing in love, where is the short circuit? We all know whether we are falling short in complying with Jesus’ commands to love. The signs are not hard to see:

•We harbor unforgiveness.

•We carry around a lot of anger.

•We are indifferent to people who are suffering.

•We see ourselves as superior to people we encounter in daily life.

•We are obsessed with our own needs and desires.

•We are too busy to reach out to someone who needs prayer, or love, or help.

The easy answer is that we are all sinners, so of course we fall short of the mark. But let me ask you this. If God accepts us as sinners, does He intend for us to stay that way? No. He is perfecting the believer day by day. He wouldn’t command us to share His love unselfishly with others without making us more and more like Christ day by day.

If you are stuck and not growing in Christ-likeness, if you are failing in love, where is your short-circuit? Maybe it is in your Christian hope. For some people, the promise of the return of Christ and eternal life and the fulfillment of God’s will are not enough—

•not enough to keep us from being depressed about our circumstances;

•or not enough to keep us from being fearful about the future;

•or not enough to give us joy in the midst of struggle;

•or not enough to make us willing to take a risk for the sake of the Kingdom.

Many Christians do not live as if what they believe is really real. And that may be because the short-circuit is in their faith. Maybe when push comes to shove, they don’t really believe it is real.

•Maybe they inherited their faith from their parents, and they have never fully embraced it as their own.

•Maybe they have bought the messages of this fallen world and undermined what they knew about God.

•Maybe they believe there is a God, but they aren’t sure He is intimately interested in them.

•Maybe they can’t believe that God could really forgive them for the terrible things they have done.

That Christian dynamic of faith, hope and love requires our attention. For if it is short-circuited at any point, you are missing out on the fullness of life that Jesus wants for you.

Jesus said, I came to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:28)

Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching,... you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

Jesus said, “I have come so that [you] may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10)

Jesus said, “I will be with you always, to the end of the ages.” (Matthew 28:20)

Jesus said,

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. [Matthew 24:30-31]

Wow! If those promises don’t give you hope, there is not hope.

May the Holy Spirit work in you more and more so that you may be open to the truth God wants to show you. May that truth give you hope. And may that hope set you free to love as only Christ can love. And may that love bless you with abundant life, as only He can give. Amen.

© Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2014

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